Love is a Wicked Creature
by Velasa
Summary: Sidonis falls in love with his boss but Garrus will only ever want the long-dead Shepard. So Sid gets very drunk and... everything goes rapidly downhill. The story of a military washout colony kid who got in over his head, his rise and fall and eventual redemption in the face of the cruelty of love. Femshep/Garrus, Lantar/various.
1. Prologue

A/N- This fic runs inspiration for the Archangel days heavily off The Naked Pen's "Mass Effect: Interregnum" (which is so much better than this fic really you should just go read that instead... ), but that'll weigh more heavily in later chapters.

This is the cleaned up version of the fic, both in matters of text and conten-t for the unedited version with the sex included you'll have to go to lady-halibuts-convos on tumblr and hit the 'my fics' tag, it'll be numbered in order on there and posted contemporary with this.

Bioware, despite the dumb things you tend to do, I want to thank you for creating such beautiful characters that inspired me to write again. Now on with the show.

* * *

.

.

.

"Fuck, I can only help you if you let me, you know that?"

"And if I'm past helping?" The reply was a snarl, and it just pissed him off more.

This wasn't the place to be having this argument and he knew it- they were hunkered down in a bolthole in some ass-end of the station and the Pack was swarming through the streets looking for them, looking for _him. _Garrus had gone and done something stupid and was going to bleed to death no matter how much fucking medigel he used if they didn't get real help because all they had was three packs and he was torn to hell from the Spirits-damned vorcha on top of the number Garm had done on him, and... and Sidonis was at the end of his rope. So yes, they were having this argument now.

"I'm not leaving you to die here just because you're pissed off and trying to be noble! What the_ fuck_ about dying for no reason is noble? Why won't you just let me help you?"

Those blue eyes stared straight through him and it sent a shiver down the younger turian's spine- not the time, not the fucking time- and that usually rich voice was stiff when it came out. "If you try to bring me out of here they'll smell the blood and kill us both, Lantar. It's better to just get out while you can."

"So you expect me to leave you here? You know me better than that Garrus, damn it!"

The stiffness eased out as his boss sighed, sinking heavily into the wall. Fuck, he was bleeding so damn much... He was crouched next to him quickly, tearing a curtain off its moorings and trying to roughly bind the worst wounds on his side.

"Fucking hell, you didn't even have your armor! You're suppose to be smarter than I am, and you just took off after him on your own, shit, _how_ could you be so- " the rest of the words choked in his throat and ground together in a frustrated sound. He couldn't say it now, he'd been meaning to admit it to the man how much he meant to him but this was _not the fucking time..._ so instead the desperate thing in his brain went into overdrive as he did the best first-aid he could.

_We should leave this hellhole and never look back, you could come with me, we could... fuck, I don't know what happened but you lost something important and you need someone to... I could be that for you if you would only..._

Shut up brain. Now. _Not_. The damn. _Time_. He gritted his mandibles and finished tying off the worst of the bleeding, green eyes snapping up sharply to meet Garrus' slightly out of focus ones. "Here's the fucking plan. You take my pistol and stay the fuck alive right here. There's a salarian doctor who lives not far off, I'll drag his ass out here at gunpoint if I need to so help me and you'll shut up and get your life saved whether you like it or not. Got it? We _need _you Garrus."

He needed him too, and his hands lingered shakily on his boss' roughly patched wounds longer than was appropriate. He just prayed that he'd still be alive to be annoyed at him in the morning.

"... Alright Lantar, alright. Get him, I'm not going anywhere."

Sidonis let out a breath he didn't know he was holding and handed the smaller gun over. Even wounded as he was Garrus' grip was still firm as steel.

He looked back at the man as he was half out the window. "If you die on me after I went to all of this trouble to find your ass, I swear I'll fucking kill you." _I love you, you idiot._

"I'm harder to kill than I look. Just get him back here soon, I'm getting dizzy."

Lantar slipped out the window and barricaded it again, disappearing into the Omega night. The doc was going to be in for a rude awakening.

* * *

"Fighting mercenaries alone on Omega, foolish. Most unfortunate."

Garrus hissed sharply as the doctor stitched up another wound on his back and tried to cover the sound with a laugh. "I'm not completely alone, I've got one other asshole with me."

Doctor Solus' attention flitted up briefly to the asshole in question and he made a dismissive sound. "Hardly trained, even younger than you. Playing a dangerous game here. Omega bad place for games, better for death wishes."

The other turian (Mental Note- Twenty-two if he was a day, should not have even been out of military yet) snapped at him. "You know I can hear you fuckers just fine from over here. But please keep insulting me, it's not like I'm the one keeping an eye out for the wall of six hundred Spirits-damned vorcha that's still looking for him or anything."

"Lantar-"

He snorted, eyes never leaving the scope of his Mantis. "He's not stupid Boss, he knows who we are. If he was with the mercs he would have killed us already- the guy stinks of STG. So just sit back and get your hide sewn back together and let me focus on keeping us alive in here." (Crude, but fairly intelligent. Markings perhaps from colony outside Hierarchy. Invictus? Would explain great deal.)

Garrus sighed, rubbed his talons over his fading tattoos and let the tension that had jumped into his shoulders drop. Locking them just made everything hurt more anyway. Lantar was right, but he'd be damned if he was going to confirm the salarian's suspicions. He just wasn't going to keep his mouth shut completely either, he had to at least try to defend himself. "I don't have a death wish."

"Facts certainly speak to the contrary."

His mandibles pulled into his face, tone tightening along with them. "How is trying to do something good a death wish?"

"Good, on Omega. Can be little else."

"So fuck does that make _your_ little mission of mercy here Doc?" Sidonis called back over his shoulder from his perch.

"My point exactly."

Well that was an unexpectedly blunt admission- Garrus glanced back to blink at Mordin who continued talking without missing a beat in his work. "My time grown short, salarian lifespan. Should be dead already. Things I have done... need to make reparations. Fix, heal, not destroy."

The room was quiet for a while after that, just his occasional hiss of pain when the doctor had to shove one of his plates back into alignment, and his friend's muttered cursing that was as natural as breathing for him. Nothing had shown itself yet in the streets below as a target that might have found the bolthole Garrus had dragged himself into when he realized he was too badly off to make it back to the main base. He never would have called out his men to come get him with so much risk- Lantar's finding him and dragging Dr. Solus out here in the middle of the Omega night was probably the only reason he was still alive. Kid always seemed to find him, and he wasn't sure of he was grateful for it or not. On one hand there was so much more work to do, but on the other...

"I... I lost someone." Garrus realized too late that he was talking and grimaced at himself, staring somewhere into the floor and the patterns of his own blood that had seeped out on it. He was half dead and delirious, that was the only explanation. "Someone important."

Doctor Solus nodded as he disinfected one of the worse gashes on his arm before starting to sew the skin back together. "Love, explains it. Very dangerous thing. Salarians thankfully immune." (Both turians tense immediately at comment, interesting. Dynamics here may be more complicated than originally thought. Will have to make note.)

"It wasn't- it wasn't like that." Garrus snapped back. It had been _exactly _like that, but that wasn't something he would admit to anyone. Hell, it had taken him months to admit it to himself even after he had dropped everything that had been his life on the Citadel for.. well, this. She haunted his dreams with _should have said _and _should have done_ well enough without anyone else knowing his business.

"Of course." (Pushing pointless. Patient unwilling to talk further but surprisingly unaware of how subordinate eases at denial- fascinating. Likelihood of patient being Archangel makes observing further improbable. Unfortunate. Have not been able to study interpersonal relationships since leaving STG, fondness for the field as hobby only exceeded by musical theatre. Best set it aside and get back to work. Krogan had done quite the number on him but vorcha wounds acquired while running far more serious. Possibility of going septic if not cleaned high. Good he was here, nothing he couldn't handle with ease.)

"There" he said as he finished the last stitch, cutting the fiber and putting his things back in his bag. "Will not look pretty when healed, but scarring part of life. Few days rest and good as new. Assuming you can't be convinced to come by clinic for checkup?"

"Absolutely not." Garrus answered firmly with a grimace, feeling the network of slashes and bruises all across his body even through the familiar medicated fog. Spirits, he felt like he'd been running for a week straight.

When he tried to stand and take a step his head swam and he would have topped over if Lantar hadn't grabbed him, subvocals betraying the anxiety under the kid's words. "Boss, just... stay down for right now. I've got Ripper and Butler coming, we'll get you out of here. You've done fucking enough on your own today."

"You're just calling Butler because you know he'll yell at me." He chuckled weakly, forcing out humor even as his friend had to lower him against the wall to sit because if he tried on his own he'd have just fallen on his face. Lantar didn't answer, just went back to peering out the window through his scope. Garrus was pretty sure he'd shaken them and they were in the clear by now if it had been this long with no vorcha. Heh, even half dead- still had it. Content in the thought, his eyes half closed as the comfortable anaesthetic haze started going into real effect when his attention was drawn back to someone moving in the room. Doctor Solus was standing by a back exit with his bag at his side but had stopped to look back at them. The salarian paused for a few moments before clearing his throat, talking a touch quieter than before.

"Do try to stay alive. Archangel means great deal to people, more than you think."

Garrus didn't answer, just smiled faintly as Mordin let himself out and carefully re-barricaded the exit. A few minutes later his omnitool woke him up with a start when it crackled to life and a familiar human voice was shouting at him. Looked like the cavalry was finally here.

* * *

Things settled down after that back at Headquarters in Kima. Butler took a while to stop reading their Boss the riot act, and Erash made a few wry comments about his choice of dancing partners, but Garrus waived it off and he'd recovered well. The doctor was as good as his reputation, thank the Spirits. Sidonis didn't think he could take more complication in his life right now.

Not that it ever stayed that way. Of course it was entirely his own fault this time.

It was one of those evenings where everyone was out and even Melanis and Sensat had gone somewhere, leaving just the two turians. Lantar both longed for and dreaded these nights... He settled his forehead against the wall of the shower as the warm water ran down him to rinse the leavings of yet another private session in his bunk with his fantasies. Normally getting off calmed his racing thoughts, but ever since the incident with Garm it had been harder and harder to keep quiet. He could have lost him that day.

The man behind the Archangel mask was getting reckless. Charging off alone, unarmored and barely armed after a freak of a krogan battlemaster wasn't like him- Garrus was patient, ruthlessly intelligent, not some half-cocked idiot like himself. Something was eating at him, something he wouldn't talk about. The guy needed to release some tension.

A pleasant shudder ran down Lantar's spine at that. He may have only spent a year in the turian military before going AWOL but he remembered intimately how his fellow soldiers dealt with stress in combat situations. Many unbonded turians were willing to swing both ways when it came to flings, and Garrus had never so much as eyed up the female dancers whenever they were in bars so his odds were good. When you took into account that Lantar preferred to be on the receiving end of sex his odds got even better- normally straight single men were usually willing to sleep with another guy on a lark as long as they were the one doing the fucking. Granted he wanted so much more than a casual fling, _so _much more, but that would... that would have to wait. Coming on too heavy was a bad idea, better to ease it in If it never came up, well, he could live with just casual sex and dreams if it meant he'd...

Fuck, he was really going to do this now wasn't he? He was, he was doing this tonight. Sidonis shut the shower off, dressed in a decent pair of civies, took a few deep breaths and slipped down the silent hall, praying that he's be back with company before long.

Garrus was in his quarters of course, seated at his terminal digging through the intel they had dug up from that last raid two days ago. Sensat and Butler specialized in this kind of thing but Garrus was never content to be idle, always preferring a hands-on approach...

"Lantar, what is it?"

_Shit, _how long had be been standing in the doorway staring at him like this? Garrus was looking at him oddly with those striking blue eyes and they made him forget how to talk through three more swallows, fidgeting his hands. Say something, Spirits, say something!

"I... needed to talk to you." Smooth Lantar, real smooth.

"Alright, I'm almost done with this Take a seat." and he gestured to the room. Of course with the desk chair taken up there's nowhere he can sit besides the bed...

"I'll stand."

The other man's browridges pulled together, mandibles hiked up slightly in concern as Sidonis continued to fidget until Garrus stood up to walk over to him. "Is something wrong?"

Shit he was so close, he could smell the other man's sweat and the tinge of his favorite Armax gun oil, could feel the faint warmth of his skin just at arm's length. He swallowed again, fighting down the urge and he was about to start speaking when Garrus stepped into that circle of space that every turian understands as their own, breaching polite conversation. It brought him close enough to touch and Lantar's self control crumbled.

One quick movement was all it took and he was clutching his hands around his Boss' waist with his forehead pressed into his- Garrus stiffened at this sudden and utterly unearned display of intimacy but Lantar barely noticed his head was swimming so bad in the sensation and anyway it was too late to turn back now. One way or the other, everything was changing right now.

"You need to take a break Garrus, and I don't think you've gotten laid since I met you. This shit is just going to keep building up unless you blow off some steam. Fuck me."

"...I'm not gay, Lantar."

"You don't have to be, you need something like this and it's not like we know a lot of female turians you can trust right?" He tried to grin but he could only imagine how pathetic it must have looked, but Garrus hadn't moved away yet so he must have a chance right? "But you can trust me."

"Spirits Lantar, you're not my type." Garrus said as he pulled his head away from the boldest of his overtures, browplates pulling together in an awkward look. Sidonis kept talking in a flood.

"It's not that different from fucking women, we barely look or feel any different on our stomachs- I don't need to be on top, I just... _shit_, just fuck me. Please." His heart was pounding wildly in his chest and he knew he had no right to touch the man like he was- the skin under the deep blue fabric was tense in his grip, Garrus was clearly uncomfortable with his advances. But he just couldn't help it as he saw his chances slipping away.

Sidonis' subvocals started to crack. "I've learned some things in my time in the colonies, I'm a damn good sub and I'm open to... a lot of things. I can... I can make you forget whoever walked out on you, just... Garrus, please..." He couldn't help it, fingers kneading his sides through his shirt, face ducking into his throat to taste him-

He was shoved away so hard his talons ripped the other man's shirt and he almost lost his feet- whatever indulgence his Boss had given him before was gone and he was trembling with barely contained rage. "She died. She didn't leave me, she _DIED_."

..._Shit_. Shit, he'd guessed wrong, shitfuck_shit_-

"When I said you're not my type I was trying to be polite but I meant it, I expected you to respect... don't _push me_ on this." Garrus wiped at his neck with a sleeve to get the wetness off, grimacing in disgust. "If you were anyone else doing that I would have broken your arm and thrown you out by now but you've stood by me in this hellhole longer than anyone- you're my _friend_ Lantar, I don't have _feelings_for you, and I haven't wanted anyone like that since-"

Unbidden, and with a wave of dread, Sidonis remembered the photograph of the human woman he's spotted in his Boss' small room. At the time it made complete sense, she'd been his Commander and it was a normal turian reaction to commemorate the dead as a Spirit of inspiration. But Garrus' words brought a certain clarity he hadn't had before- the image hadn't been ornate enough for a shrine, it just felt like a... like a keepsake.

Not his type. **Fuck**. He'd gone and done the worst fucking thing possible hadn't he, just on pure luck?

"-Just do me a favor and never bring any of this up again." Garrus finished, trying and failing to control the anger in his subvocals.

Sidonis forced himself to laugh, holding his hands up in an apologetic gesture that had the side effect of broadcasting _I swear I'm not going to grope you while you're in mourning again, seriously._"Man I'm sorry about that, that was stupid. It's cool, I'll forget the whole thing, never bother you again. Promise. It'll be like we never had this conversation. Scuse me, I gotta... I gotta go fix my gun, I think I broke it on that last raid. Seeya." and he ducked out of the room like it was on fire.

Part of Garrus noticed he didn't curse. Lantar _always_ cursed, and if he suddenly stopped like that something was off... but he was too stressed out to register it. Damn, he was going to need to get a new tunic...


	2. The Sweetest Kind of Comfort

A/N- I totally stole the title for this chapter from a very lovley little fill on the K-meme. My apologies A!A, it just fit so well.

* * *

He wasn't stupid, he didn't go to Afterlife- none of them went to Afterlife, too fucking dangerous. Instead he found some hole-in-the-wall dextro joint and proceeded to get himself hammered to within an inch of his checkbook's life. It helped, a little. It took the burn off of how good those few seconds had felt between grabbing his Boss around the waist and finally saying it with their foreheads pressed together, and how godawful everything after that had turned out. Now... now he was just miserable and horny and just _fuck_ he just needed to stop _thinking_ and keep... just keep drinking. Or he could hit his head against the bar a few more times, that worked too. No one paid any attention, no one gave a fuck about some random drunk as long as he wasn't starting shit with other customers, and the bartenders would ignore his behavior as long as he had the credits to justify taking up the space.

_Great job Lantar. Reaaaaal perceptive there. Fuck was your great insight again? 'He doesn't oogle Asari, he must be gay?' Fucking brilliant! You're doing your family proud! _He kept up the slow rhythm of face-to-bar with just such choice personal comments, cursing under his breath between thunks.

"You know, you've been doing that for six minutes straight now. What's the occasion?"

The smooth accent- not quite but almost Cipritine- washed over Sidonis, pulling him out of his musing self-abuse to look up blearily at the source of that phenomenal voice. Tall, strongly built, intricate yellow tattoos on pale grey plates that were just a few shades up from white. And blue eyes, that same stunning shade of ice blue that had taken his breath away the first time he'd met Garrus all those months ago. He was broader than Garrus and his voice was deeper, rougher- but he had the accent and the eyes and the body language said _possibly interested_ and.. hell. He sat up.

"No occasion, the bar deserved it." he managed to quip even in his advanced state of intoxication, steadying a hand on his chin to try to keep the room from spinning long enough to determine that yes, the guy was checking him out. A warm feeling of pleasure fluttered through his skin, the first good thing he'd felt in hours, and he did his best to compose himself. "What the hell brings you to a shithole like this?"

"Cheap booze. Maybe a little company."

Oh he was definitely being hit on. Shit, he liked the way he looked at him, that little grin, the way he sat beside him well within his personal space. And the way he talked- anything to keep him talking. "I've been told that I function as company, quite marginally at least. What's your name?"

"Cassius. And you?" He held out a gloved hand, watching him intently.

"L-Lantar." Turians didn't touch casually- the alien gesture was a screaming telegraph that whispered promises, and he took it. Clothed fingers brushed over the softer areas of skin on his hand and he shuddered slightly, the warm feeling curling up low in his groin.

"Nice name. What do you say we get out of here and find some place a little nicer."

Fuck, yes, he needed this more than anything right now. He nodded, not trusting his voice to come out as anything but a squawk.

Cassius leaned forward, mouth plates nipping lightly at his throat, warm breath on his skin. "So your place or mine?"

Oh fuck he was getting turned on so hard he-_ fuck_,_ answer the question!_ He though of his bunk in Kima, quickly dismissing it- not only was it in the middle of Archangel headquarters but he'd had one too many miserable sleepless nights there lying on his stomach trying to convince himself his hands belonged to someone else. "... Yours."

"Alright." His tongue flittered out briefly to taste him and Sidonis had to use all of his drunken focus not to spring out of his plates right there. "So what are we waiting for?"

".. Nothing. I've got nothing else to wait for."

* * *

Lantar wasn't terribly familiar with this area of the district, and he peered out a bit blearily at it as the tall stranger was navigating the locks to get into his apartment complex. _Damn _he was drunk, but he didn't especially care about that right now, he was getting laid and... and _damn _that was one fine looking turian standing behind him. He stole another glance or two and enjoyed the warmth running under his plates that came from more than just the alcohol in his system.

There was the click of the lock and Cassius murmured "There we go", chuckling lightly under his breath. He strode in with utter ease, still annoyingly sober, not even stumbling once on the way. The apartment was just one door among many, decent-ish for Omega, nice enough that you could be relatively sure you wouldn't get murdered overnight. Some cabinets, somewhere to sit, a bathroom, and the bedroom off towards the back. Sidonis took a few moments to walk around, curious about the space- he hadn't been invited somewhere in... some time. Cassius stood back in what passed for a kitchen, watching him over the lip of a Palaveni Sunrise, amusement and hunger in his eyes. Damn, those_ eyes_... they sent a shudder down his spine and suddenly he was horny as hell and didn't feel like making small talk or anything else, he just wanted to get screwed senseless. Fuck, he was probably showing by now. ...

Finally the other man finished his glass and approached him, taking off his gloves as he walked until it was a bare hand that touched Lantar's chin.

"How about we skip the formalities and get on with this." the deeper voice purred against the side of his head by the ear canal with a flick of tongue against his skin- Sidonis managed to groan something in assent that probably had six different profanities in it because Cassius chuckled and led him in the direction of the bedroom. "Eager, I like that.

* * *

Son of a _bitch _the guy hadn't been kidding when he'd said he liked it rough... Lantar's ass was well and truly pounded but it had been worth it. He could take a little pain, he _needed _a little pain to bite down on everything else that hurt even through the fucking and the booze, and he idly eyed where he'd torn the mattress with his talons in an unguarded moment. The guy didn't seem to mind the damage though, that was a plus. Also Lantar had managed not to say the wrong name, double plus.

Spent, Sidonis was collapsed on the mattress, and Cassius was digging through the minibar. He came back with a glass of brandy and a case of Vallumian cigarettes- shit, those weren't easy to get after the attack fifteen years ago- and sat heavily on the end of the bed next to him. Sidonis let his eyes half close so he couldn't quite see the other turian- just catch the flicker of his eyes in their dark pits, listen to his voice and think about someone else fucking him into this numb oblivion. It was a good thought, though the hangover was going to kill him in the morning.

"So" Cassius said in that rough voice, "Why did somebody else cut you loose Lantar? Sweet little thing like you, a guy could get used to." There was a predatory look under the curiosity there and it was turning him on again.

"I never said anything about getting dumped."

Smoke trailed out the sides of the other man's mouth as he flared his mandibles in a laugh. "You didn't have to kid, I know the look and that was it. It's fine if it's too personal, I'm just curious."

He smelled like sweat and sex and the sweet leaves of the cigs, leaning at that casual angle with those gorgeous eyes, and Lantar was drunk and he started talking. "It's fucking complicated. He's my boss, and he's too caught up in his own shit to live, at all. I tried, Spirits I tried, but he refuses to ease up enough to let any of the tension out. I'm just so tired of all this..." _Archangel. He'd almost said Archangel. _Sidonis propped himself up on his elbows, shaking his head out heavily from the fog that was gathered there to buy time to breathe. Can't fucking make mistakes like that. "This business."

"Mh, know the feeling. So what Op are you under?"

"Sorry, Black Op. The higher-ups don't want us talking about business." Close enough to the truth, though that had been his previous job and he'd quit by helping blow the operation sky high- not that he needed to know that.

He didn't argue the concept, just nodded and changed topics. "So what's he like, this guy of yours?"

"He's... not mine. Just found out that he's straight, so he's not going to be mine anytime soon either. Shit,I'd really like to _not _think about him right now."

Cassius laughed in a heavy bark, the smoke dissipating as he shook his head "I'm a damn genius with conversation tonight. Should I just shut up?"

"Not really... I like listening to you talk." Lantar muttered with embarrassment clinging to his subvocals. Could he have sounded much more like some backwater colony kid? Shit, not that anyone would have mistaken him for sophisticated in the first place but he didn't need to make it worse.

"You ever been to Palaven?" He _hmm_ed understanding when the younger man shook his head no. "Mh, thought I recognized the tats from one of the outworlds. Thracia?"

"Invictus."

The looping markings on his face distorted slightly as his brow plates shot up in surprise. "Shit, sorry. Been told it's a hell of a place but never been there."

"No one ever wants to be, it just happens." Lantar stared off for a few seconds before shaking his head out again- not something he wanted to linger on. He glanced back up, almost shy. "...Think you could talk about Palaven?"

"After the ride you gave me I'll talk about anything you want." Cassius smiled again and started into some story from decades ago. Despite what a terrible idea it was, between the booze and the afterglow cooling down into a comfortable throbbing and the soothing rumble of that accent, he ended up falling asleep on his folded elbows where he lay.


	3. Secrets

A/N- pardon the short chapter, but this bit really works best on its own. The next one will be longer.

* * *

Sidonis made it back to headquarters almost an hour after the meeting was suppose to start- he got a few annoyed glances but they got back to planning whoever they were raiding next without a hitch. Everything was normal for about two weeks before he crawled off to that same bar again. Two nights of drinking too much there later, Cassius showed up next to him again.

That pattern repeated a few times over the next four months- He's doing ok, something in his brain goes to shit and traps him in a rut, he gets wasted at the bar until he shows up and fucks all of his misery away. He knew he shouldn't use the same partner this much, it was a risk to keep going back to the same guy, but the sex was just... so damn good, and the allure of his voice and his eyes was hard to resist. No one had ever accused Lantar of having too strong of a will, and in the miserable ruts that drove him to drink himself under the table he had even less than usual.

... It wasn't all sex, not exactly. The company was good too- Cassius was... charming. He liked the stories he told about growing up on Palaven back in the 2140s and 50s- causing trouble on shore leave mostly, making his older sister crazy. It was a point of sympathy- Sidonis had had older sisters as well and it had been much the same, before the plague came anyway... he didn't talk about that part. On Cass' end the stories always stopped when he hit about Lantar's age but he didn't prod. It wasn't his business to dive into other people's secrets.

...He liked how he smiled. He liked his voice- Parthia was a sister city to Cipritine, which explained the similarity in the accent. Lantar could listen to him for hours and sometimes did, to the point where falling asleep there nearly became normal. He liked the way his hands roved over his skin. He liked a lot about him. It was... almost enough to make him forget some times.

On things besides the deep past they never talked as loosely as they had that first night- Lantar had almost slipped and given up something crucial to a complete stranger, he wasn't going to damnwell do that. Thankfully Cassius took the hint that he didn't want to talk about work to heart and never brought the topic up again. More often than he liked though, the talk was about Garrus. Not Garrus-as-Archangel or even really Garrus-as-individual, but as some sexual construct he'd invented in his fantasies that Cassius wanted to top. It was his kink he said, he liked to do better than the last lover.

Warm breath trickled over the crevasses between the plates on the back of his head as the man leaned low over him, nipping at the skin edging up under his fringe while one set of talons scraped up his side. When those pale hips rocked casually against his own Lantar shuddered and forgot whatever the hell he'd been thinking about. _Fuck _he... _fuck _all he could do was moan into the mattress and press back into him pleadingly.

"So do I fuck better than he does?" He purred into his ear. Lantar couldn't think, couldn't talk, couldn't do anything intelligent while he was in him like that. Further movement didn't follow when he didn't answer- the whimper that crawled out of him didn't get it to start back up again and when he tried to move against him for that sweet friction he found himself pressed down lightly but firmly under his talons. "Come on, tell me already."

"Shit, how many times do I have to tell you we never actually-"

"So how did you _dream _he would fuck you Lantar." One of his hands moved off Sidonis' hips and slipped between his body and the sheets, touching him lightly. His willpower snapped.

"He'd be all slow precision strikes, taking his damn time like a fucking sniper, slow and gentle and nowhere near as fucking _hard _and-" he lost his voice when the friction resumed with a vengeance. Too fast, too- he was going to bleed for this one but_ fuck _he needed it- he'd started thinking about how it would feel if it really was Garrus on top of him- and then the hand brushing his length gripped him fully in that turmoil between fire warm skin and tangled sheets and he stopped thinking completely.

When he was lucid again Cassius had gotten off him, standing with his cig and his booze like he always did, but he handed the brandy to Sidonis instead of sitting and drinking it himself. That was odd. Lantar gingerly shifted himself into a sitting position- fuck, his ass hurt- and gulped most of the glass in one go. He really shouldn't be drinking more than he already had, but what the hell was the harm at this point? It's not like his hangover was going to get worse.

Cassius was so prenaturally calm it was like he'd separated from the room somehow just by staring off into the middle distance. He took another long drag on his cigarette before snuffing it out, walking casually to the pile he'd left his clothes in.

"I thought your voice sounded familiar." he mentioned back over his shoulder- Sidonis was enjoying the sound of it too much to really think much on what he was saying or how deadpan it was before there was the ping of an omnitool coming on, replaying a gargled fragment of com traffic.

"-_fuck it Butler, where the shit do you _want_ me to go right now, they've got me cornered here! If that barefaced bastard Ripper doesn't get into his own fucking position and cover me_-"

The glass shattered on the floor as it slipped nervelessly from his talons. Cassius was standing there as calm as anything, a pistol leveled at his face.

"It's a fucking shame Lantar. I would have liked to keep you around, but" he shrugged, shook his head. His voice was as cold as ice, those beautiful eyes unreadable. "Tarak's been a pain in the ass since you guys broke into his house, and... Well, you know how it is when you need to please the boss."


	4. Torture's not my idea of a good time

He was too drunk to remember everything that happened after that, but when he woke up in a cell with a raging hangover and his ass still raw he got the gist of it and vomited on the floor. _Fuck_, just- it wasn't suppose to end like this, he wasn't suppose to-

The first interrogators showed up shortly after while he was trying to wipe himself off best he could manage with his bindings- two humans and a turian, all in Blue Suns colors. The human woman and the ugly excuse for a turian snapped questions at him while the other one sat back fiddling with what was clearly Sidonis' omnitool. Apparently, they'd been hoping hacking into it would aid in the interrogation, but all it was providing them with was a choice selection of his favorite porn. Surprise surprise, Jentha was not pleased.

He didn't give them shit- he found his salvation in curses and insults and snide comments about their parentage. As the tech kept trying to hack the omnitool for anything important he tripped one of the security features Sensat and Butler had dug deep into the wiring and the unit exploded in his hands- _fuck_ it was beautiful, Lantar started laughing. The human woman reached through the bars and pistol-whipped him so hard it turned his head but it didn't stop his grin- he had a temporary victory there in her anger and the tech's howls at his burnt hands and he savored it while he could.

The three of them left not long after with nothing, but he wasn't stupid enough to think that was the end of it. Others came and went after that, and he was struck a lot more often- like _verra _in the water going wild after the first drop of blue blood touches their skin.

He didn't see Cassius again. It hurt more than it should have.

Day two was more of the same with the shouting and the bleeding. They knew who he was now, who he used to work for, but there weren't enough records left from Sunwise to fill a shoebox and everyone who'd ever known him on the station was dead or with Archangel so his identity was functionally useless. Course, all that did was piss them off more.

Stress was giving him bad dreams, miserable twisted things that woke him up in a cold sweat of panic- most of them riffs that started back in that bedroom with Cassius pointing a gun at his head. Sometimes he'd shoot him, sometimes Garrus would be there and get shot, sometimes Garrus would be the one with the gun- whatever happened, they were always bad. He hadn't gotten much sleep the night he was kidnapped and he'd gotten even less here, they gave him just enough food and water to keep him alive and there were enough turians in the Suns to know exactly what temperature to keep the place at for him to be functional but never warm. His nerves were fraying, but he was still holding himself together. Eventually he collapsed into sleep.

The next time he woke he nearly pissed himself when he recognized the deadly red hulk that was Garm of the Blood Pack standing outside his cell. The terror must have been clear on his face- the krogan grinned. There wasn't a single mark on the fucker from the time he'd tangled with Garrus, and Lantar shuddered as he remembered finding him after that bloody fight. He'd never been as scared in his life as he had been seeing Garrus slumped in the corner of the bolthole... at the time anyway, worse things had happen since. Garm's grudges ran deep, and while Archangel wasn't there to take it out on, well...there was always one of his little friends to make an example of.

_Shit, they're tired of waiting and they're just going to kill me, he's going to rip me to pieces and I don't want to fucking die, I don't, I don't-_

But Garm made no move to enter and just glanced back to someone out of view in the hallway- Sidonis' heart was racing too fast to come up with what horror the krogan was waiting for, not that it mattered. If they'd given him hours he wouldn't have thought up the small asari that stepped around the half ton of death in armor to peer at him. She was young, shit, the youngest one he'd ever seen. But when she grinned at him it didn't reach her eyes, and a cold wave went through his skin that had nothing to do with the temperature.

"So you're the troublemaker Tarak's had holed up in here? I was expecting to be impressed." She shrugged, letting herself into his cell. He climbed out of bed trying to look as formidable as possible, but that was a hard thing to pull off for a shaky turian making due on three hours of sleep a night between beatings.

"One of you killed my father, you know. Uncle's been in a rage about it, he'll love to see you all burn. Personally, all I care about is that one of your snipers made me second in command for Eclipse." Again with that predatory grin entirely separate from her black eyes, quick flickers of biotic blue weaving between her fingers like a favorite toy. "It's Eleni. I'll be your interrogator for the rest of the day Lantar Sidonis. Cooperate and it'll be over quickly."

Lantar gritted his mandibles and stood straight, staring her down. She looked pleased.

"Or don't."

He lasted about three hours

* * *

If anyone passed by for the next few hours after that he didn't notice them. His fucking nerves were still on fire and his throat was raw from screaming- he'd never been in that much pain before. He didn't even know biotics could _do _that, that anyone would even think of that kind of...

_Stop, stop fucking thinking about yourself, stop feeling fucking sorry for yourself you miserable bastard YOU GAVE THEM UP YOU SON OF A BITCH YOU GAVE THEM UP!_

Kima, he'd told her it was in Kima, he'd told her who they took the base from, he'd given her most of their names- she just, she just kept asking who Archangel was and he couldn't give her that so he told her about almost everyone else and oh Spirits he'd...

He slumped down even further from the ball he was curled up in, his forehead knocking against the cold filthy floor and he wept in the only way a turian could with the keening wail that tore from his chest. It didn't last long, he didn't have enough left in him for it to last long, but when it stopped he didn't bother getting up from the floor. _Garrus. I'm so fucking- I can't-_

Shit. Even in his own head apologizing was useless. The whole fucking thing was useless, he was going to die here in this cell and that would be the end of it. He should have died before talking, but he was a shitty excuse for a turian and a fucking coward, had always been a fucking coward, and he did the unforgivable to make the pain stop.

Something actually touching him was the only thing that pulled him out of his own head- he'd been brought a tray with his shitty dextro ration for the day. Either he was seeing double or there were more of them than usual. It took a breath, two, to un-pry an arm from around his waist and pick up his dinner. If he was anything besides miserable he was hungry so he tore into the bar just slow enough not to choke to death on it and nothing less before letting himself settle on his side on the floor again.

He wasn't seeing double, there was still another bar there. And a pleasant smell he recognized, even through the foulness clinging to him. His eyes rose slowly to the door.

"Cassius."

"You look like shit Lantar."

You know what? Fuck it, he was done. He was on his feet like a shot and threw himself at the bars but his arm couldn't quite reach him on the far side of the hallway, couldn't get his hands around that lying throat, and the violent frustration burned through his features as he bared his teeth on full feral display and barely kept his raw voice below a scream. "Big fucking surprise isn't it?! You turn somebody in to be tortured for three motherfuckering days AND HE LOOKS LIKE SHIT! Fuck you, just_**fuck yo**__u_!"

The other turian's expression never changed, the same one he'd had when he brought him in with that disconnected stare- bastard didn't even have the decency to look cowed for what he'd done to him and it only made Lantar angrier. He just couldn't get the words out and they devolved into fuckawful sounds as he gripped the bars and sunk his head against them.

"Why?" Was all that would come out in the end, the taste of his own blood strong in his mouth.

"Didn't have a choice. We're professionals, you know how it is."

Yeah, he did. Fuck. He pushed off the bars to stare back into the cell, his ruined clothes hanging half off him. "I just want to know one thing." His voice was so fucking small and pathetic it was embarrassing to hear, shit. "Was this whole thing a trick? Did you know who I was the whole time and you were just waiting for the right moment?"

"You were just a willing kid with a sense of humor and a nice fringe, I didn't figure it out until you said I didn't fuck like a sniper. Then a couple of other things fell into place and the recording confirmed it." A faint flutter of breath, a wave of that sweet smell trickling over his skin- he'd come over to stand at the door, well aware he was in striking range. "The idea is solid enough- the groups did send out hookers to try to snag one of you, but those were all asari. I was strictly bad luck on your part."

Lantar looked back at him once before turning away again, mandibles locked so tight to his face that it hurt his joints. Fuck, even in the damn Blue Suns armor, even with what he'd done to him, he still looked so damn good. The silence stretched on for a few more minutes and still the merc didn't leave. Lantar knew he looked like hell, he smelled like hell, he felt like hell, but he still he wanted to... he swallowed hard, and he hated himself even as he asked. "Could you... one more time. Fuck me. They're probably going to kill me tomorrow, I..."

"If you're hoping to use me as a hostage it won't do you a lot of good. I'm not worth shit to the organization."

"The state I'm in I couldn't take a pyjak hostage." _He's going to leave. He's going to laugh at you and leave and then _the door opened behind him and he froze. Cassius didn't say anything, just nudged him towards the bed and put out his cig on the frame before kneeling behind him to unshackle his feet. Sidonis was bent down gently over the mattress and he closed his eyes, hearing rather that seeing the hatches of his pelvic armor release. He expected it to hurt- his whole body already hurt- but this time it was... different. Slower, more precise, he... he fucks him like he'd always thought Garrus would.

When it was over Cassius stayed laid out on top of him for a while, his face turned into Sidonis' throat. The chestpiece of his armor pressed uncomfortably against his spine but he didn't complain. That was... he could get used to this, if he wasn't going to die tomorrow. Then that gorgeous voice spoke up again, tingling softly against his skin.

"First time we met, you asked me what I was doing in a shithole like this. Truth is I was a lot like you as a kid- stupid, headstrong, in love with a guy with a dangerous idea. 'Cept in my case instead of playing vigilante we blew up a colony, killed about a hundred thousand people."

"Vallum. You were with the ones who did Vallum." You'd think that kind of thing would come out as an accusation but in the intimate way they were curled together it was nothing more than a statement.

The answer came in a nod he could feel against his skin. "Ran off to Taetrus with my sister and her kids after the Hierarchy executed our parents as separatist spies. Janus helped us settle in. Beautiful fucking man, darkest plates I've ever seen on a turian, red tats, gold eyes. The kind of guy you'd go to war for. We had a nice life for a few years. Never knew what he saw in me." Cassius pulled his gauntlets off and ran his hands up Sidonis' arms to smooth the sores the cuffs had chaffed into his wrists. "I'll spare you the political shit but it went downhill from there. The complex my sis and her kids were at was raided by the Hierarchy and the civilians blew the place sky high rather than surrender. Then Janus was in charge of the ship that hit the Radiatum. Ran for my life, been hiding here ever since. I miss rain like you wouldn't believe."

There was a click- the shackles popped off and the warmth on his back moved away. Lantar turned and stared at him for the first time since he'd come into his cell in dull shock. Cassius' eyes settled on him momentarily before he fished something out of a bag and tossed it on the bed next to him- decent clothes and a credit chit.

"There's enough on there for two tickets off this station. If you can get your guy to leave with you, do it. Leave as soon as you can- they're moving on your compound at 0900 tomorrow and Eleni was going to wait a few days after they released you so she could hunt you down again."

His hands were shaking so hard he could barely dress himself- the outfit was hideous and a little small but it was intact and didn't smell like shit. "Why are you doing this? You're the one who turned me in."

"I had to."

"And now?"

"I'm old and tired of noble sacrifices Lantar. You're too damn young for this- my sister's _kids_ were your age when they died."

He couldn't come up with a reply to that so he just swallowed and went back to trying to fasten the shirt but his hands were so damn... the older man sighed and came over to work the gold clips for him.

".. How do I get him out of there? They've got to have people on the building already."

"The thing about the Suns on Omega is that a lot of separatists end up here. Our ties to the movement run a lot deeper than they ever could to this organization, and while I might have been a nobody they remember Janus. He... wasn't the kind of man you forget." Cass smiled for the first time since their last night in his apartment, though a lot smaller than he usually did and there was a sadness to it. "It's all people from Taetrus on the building and for my sake and his, when I told them my lover and his boyfriend need an out they agreed to provide it. They'll turn a blind eye to two turians disappearing in the night, no matter who one of them might be."

After finishing with the shirt Cassius brought a hand up to hold the side of his face, brushing a thumb pad over Lantar's forehead. It wasn't a gesture with the weight behind it of a full forehead-touch, but it was certainly a significant sign of affection. "You want to thank me, stay alive. Now get the hell out of here."

The touch disappeared when he moved away to get his gauntlets from the bed and pull them on. Cassius left the cell door open behind him when he left, walking out of his life as easily as he'd walked into it.

No one stopped the former captive on his way out, and Lantar found himself standing in a street somewhere, free at last but hurt badly with no idea where he was. Eventually he managed to drag himself to a public terminal booth and used some of his gifted credits to put in a call back to Kima. Fuck his hands were shaking again, barely managed to get the keys pressed in right- he'd lost most of his numbers when his omnitool fried but he still had Garrus' personal line imbedded deep in his memory. He got it right and it took so much of what he had left to keep his voice even when he spoke up. "Hi."

"Lantar, where the _hell _have you been_?_"

Subvocals didn't transmit over the line, but it was clear he'd been worried about him. Fuck, he had been... Lantar had to clamp down on his throat with a hand to keep from laughing hysterically. "I, um, I must have drank too much and the guy I tried to pick up um, mugged me and I don't know where the hell I am and... and I need a ride. Can you..."

"Just stay on the line, Sensat's tracking your location. Spirits don't scare me like this, I can't-" his tone cut off in a stressed growl and Sidonis felt so awful he had to sit down. Least it wasn't a vid call. He kept his composure long enough for the tech to lock his location and Garrus ordered him not to leave the area under any circumstance. When the line finally cut the last inch of his composure degraded into some kind of laughing crying keen that shook his bruises so hard it hurt but he couldn't stop for... he didn't know how long.

Garrus was the only one in the car that pulled up next to the booth and he didn't say a word, just popped the door for him and watched in grim silence as he dragged himself into the passenger's seat. No one spoke for the rest of the ride.

.

.

* * *

A/N- about the timeline discrepency with Vallum- I wrote that bit when I didn't have online access and thought I remembered it being pre-game. By the time I was able to check I liked what I had too much, and it's not as if it impacts anything in the games so the Blast is set in 2170 in my fic universe.


	5. Small Comforts

After pulling into the garage tunnels under the building Garrus killed the engine and the exterior lights but made no movement to leave the car. It was admirable how well he could force calm. "Who did this to you."

Fuck, he didn't have an answer lined up, he didn't know how to bring it up, he needed more time-_ think of something, quick!_ "It's... not really clear right now, I can't remember."

"If you remember tell me because I'll kill them."

The lead weight in his mouth that was his tongue stalled at the ice cold tone his voice had taken on. "You don't need to- I'm fine really, I just got-"

"You were missing for three days, you haven't been able to wash, you stink of sex and blood and you can barely walk. I'm not naieve Lantar. I know what happened and no one treats my friends like that. If you don't want to talk about it I accept that, but don't pretend you're alright. Give me his name and he's dead."

_Fuck, he thinks somebody raped me. _If it was possible to feel worse than he already did, that did it.

Garrus' posture was rigid in his seat, staring ahead resolutely at his talons still gripping the wheel. He kept his voice so fucking calm Sidonis almost didn't catch the small crack in his subvocals. "This is my fault. Ever since I turned you down you've been more and more reckless. I saw it, I should have set someone to keep an eye on you and I didn't. I'm sorry Lantar. This shouldn't have happened to you."

He was... apologizing. To him. After what he'd done, after he'd given them all up for-

"I need a shower." He managed to choke out, and thank the Spirits it made Garrus stop talking. When he tried to get out of the car on his own a hand grabbed his shoulder to stop him and the wave that ran through him- his sudden rush of fantasies was quickly crushed when it became clear he was just helping him out of the car. Turians didn't do close contact like this unless they were fighting, fucking or evacuating your ass and he knew it was the third option, he wasn't an idiot. But Garrus had his arm around his back and one of Sidonis' tossed over his cowl and the closeness... Garrus walked him in to the base, unknowing that the jittery weakness in his legs was as much from lust and self loathing as it was the beatings.

The building was deserted at this hour. Everyone who had a place had gone home, which just left Melanis in the infirmary with... whatever his illness was, and Sensat was probably staying up there with him again. It meant that no one was there to see him like this and Sidonis was glad of it. Going up the stairs in his condition was unpleasant but it was such a relief to see his own room again he forgot everything that had happened for a few seconds. Then in a slow trickling realization it occurred to him that Garrus was so stressed about the shape he was in he was intent on taking him into the bathroom to help and oh shit.

"I can- I can do this on my..." But his voice was so quiet he barely heard himself and then Garrus was starting to open the clasps on his shirt and there were memories flooding back into his head and before he could think about it he had grabbed his Boss around the waist again and pulled him flush into himself. The memory of just having been fucked by a man in armor shot straight to his groin and...

It wasn't like the first time. There wasn't the shouting, or the shoving, or the boiling anger- he was just gently but _firmly _pushed back at arm's reach with a quiet "Stop." Garrus expression and his fidgeting mandibles broadcasted his violent discomfort just fine on their own without those kinds of reactions. That was about when Lantar realized he had an erection and he sat down very quickly on the tile floor.

Garrus left, closing the door of both the bathroom and his quarters behind him, and Lantar was left feeling very small. He took a very cold shower and stumbled off to his bunk still dripping to hit his head into the wall a few times. Or repeatedly. Fuck.

* * *

He could never figure out if he wanted to be left alone after that or not because twenty minutes after he crawled into bed he heard the door open, and the chair from the desk creaked as it was pulled to within a few feet behind him. Those blue eyes were on him, he could feel them through his plates and shit he was going to see the treachery there, how could he not?

"Lantar."

His head shifted back slightly to indicate he was listening, but actually rolling over and looking at him instead of the wall... not something he could do right now. Not after that. So instead he goes back into his safety net of smartass. "There's got to be more important shit you could be doing than sitting here with an idiot with no self control."

"You're in no state to be left alone right now."

"And you're too fucking noble for your own good, but you know that." Sidonis winces, pulling tighter into himself and staring at the wall miserably.

Garrus didn't respond to the snark but just sighed, his voice soft. "I'm not mad at you. We can't help who we fall for... I know. More than I would have wanted to." Lantar blinks at his tone, glancing over his shoulder at him- the other turian looks tired, seated heavily with his elbows on his knees. "For all I know, she would have reacted the same way if I'd ever approached her."

There was pain there under his wry smile and it was almost enough to distract him from everything else and actually shift around to really see the man. He'd always gotten the impression they'd been a bonded pair two steps short of a formal ceremony when she died, but it was just... fantasies. Like his. The thought was hard to wrap his head around.

'So I understand what it's like, and I wish there was something I could..." another sigh, a heavy shake of his downturned head. "It's just not something I can be for you."

He realizes in that moment that if he played to the hilt his misconceptions of what had happened while he was gone, pushed for it with his knowledge of Garrus' responsibility complex and set it against the other man's own unrequited loss... How many times has he dreamed about being in just this position- naked, alone at night, almost close enough to touch- with Garrus ending up fucking him into this very bed? A little more treachery, and he could get what he wanted. What he'd always wanted. But while he's a coward and a traitor and a miserable excuse for a friend... he's not a monster. Lantar turns away and fixes his gaze back on the wall.

"Just go, ok? I can't look at you right now."

The silence in the room at that point was painful, but there came the click of armored footfalls that disappeared into the hallway and the younger man let out a breath he didn't realize he was holding, settling a little more easily into the bed. Small comforts.

Garrus deserved her, Savior of the Citadel Commander-Fucking-Shepard. But the woman had dropped dead on him and broken the man he loved, and it left a bitter taste in his mouth that this was the situation they were all stuck in, all alone in their own little hells. Not that it mattered for Garrus, he'd be dead in the morning.

_They're going to kill Garrus._

It was like being electrocuted again with the pain screaming in his skull as it really registered what was going to happen- not conceptually but with sapphire blood painting the walls. There could have been some noble thought about 'they'll be together at last!' but Lantar didn't believe in the afterlife enough for that kind of shit. Maybe it was jealously, maybe it was guilt, maybe it was that feeling that made his chest ache when he thought about the man too long, but he wasn't going to just hand Garrus over to the void that easily.

He was on his feet and halfway to the door before he froze. What the fuck was he going to say, what could he possibly do? There were already people on the building and while they'd let the two of them go, if Garrus knew what was... he'd never abandon his men. But it was already too fucking late- he'd given Eleni their names, their apartments, so while the mercs were just waiting for everyone to come to the morning meeting if they told them to all run they'd still be fucked. His meaningful stride degraded into obsessive pacing across the room, never quite making it back to the door. He couldn't save them. But he could still save Garrus. He could still protect one person, even if he destroyed everything they'd worked together to build in the last two years.

The message he wrote up was short and to the point- he remembered 'the guy' and he wanted to meet with Garrus somewhere halfway across the Ward to take his imaginary attacker down. Plenty of distance and at just the right time- he'd be far away when the mercs came in the morning. The lies he told to make it happen would kill him, but keeping Garrus alive was all that mattered and he scheduled the mail to arrive right before he knew his Boss always woke.

In the other window, a much less carefully worded lump of text stared at him.

_"I'm sorry._

_I shouldn't have lied to you. I shouldn't have gotten in bed with the Suns, I should have been more careful. I shouldn't have fallen for you._

_I'm so fucking sorry Garrus. If you need to kill me for this do it, it'll mean you got out of here alive."_

That one could be scheduled too, set it to go out after... after it was too late. Some kind of explanation, something to...

He shut the message without sending it, cleared out his accounts and bought his passage off of this hellhole with half of the credits he'd been given. Garrus was too fucking noble and he knew it, he should never have even hoped he could convince him to come. It had just been so easy to believe what Cassius said. _Fuck, don't think about him either, you're just making it worse for yourself._ Lantar slammed the terminal shut and buried his face in his hands. Briefly he still thought about walking up there once Garrus was asleep just to say goodbye to the doors, but he couldn't trust himself to do this right if he got close to him again. No safe way to say goodbye.

"I love you." he said aloud for the first and last time to the empty room.

He was gone three hours before Garrus woke up.


	6. Ten Good Men

A/N- my apologies to The Naked Pen for my deeply rough attempt at borrowing their characters, I just can't see the Archangel crew as anyone else.

* * *

Lantar wasn't at the meeting spot. He'd waited half an hour and tried calling twice but there was no response, and Garrus forced down the rising feeling of dread in his chest. "You're absolutely certain?"

"Yes, Palaven-clan! You are the (_hic_) first of your kind to come to my business today- I never forget a face (_hic_), and turians are quite rare in this district."

His browplates pulled together, the only interruption in his well groomed calm cop demeanor. Like a professional he kept well aware of where he had his weapons concealed on his person- it was just a volus, but he'd learned the hard way that species was no indicator of danger. "Another turian had reservations to meet me here twenty minutes ago. Shorter than I am, purple tattoos on the mandibles."

"The only reservation for today was (_hic_) a group of hanar, and if your friend had called in we would have told him that (_hic_) our cook who could have handled your orders died from plague last week. Your friend must have been (_hic_) mistaken." The owner was nervous but not terrified, trying to be cordial for a potential customer instead of looking for an angle into why he was asking this. Something just wasn't adding up and he excused himself- he could call Sensat to hack open the restaurant's incoming call records without jeopardizing his friend's privacy.

"Sensat, come in."

Silence. Same from Butler and Vortash, and when he tried calling Ripper and even _he_ didn't answer it triggered an alarm. Nothing but static from the base and Lantar had gone missing the morning after he staggered in raped and beaten. Garrus had been raised too damn well to panic but he was far too aware that something had gone very wrong, and he settled in to dig through all the security cameras he could hack in the area with his omnitool when an icon appeared on his visor. Ripper had written back to him- a glance opened it.

"_Blue Suns attacked. Heavy casualties, all dead or dying, do not return to base. Sidonis sold us out. Repeat, stay away and stay alive._"

No one answered when he tried to call back, and he read the message one more time with his mandibles locked against his face. "Fuck that."

It was a good thing Omega didn't have speed limits because he would have broken all of them in his headlong rush back to Kima. Tar and stones skittered off the roof as he landed a few blocks away to continue approaching on foot, abandoning the car fully knowing it would be stolen in ten minutes but not giving a damn. On the way were a few loose Suns patrols but he slipped by them with ease to climb up through the tunnels into the base.

"I should have known... you wouldn't listen."

Ripper's voice was so weak he never would have heard him if he hadn't nearly tripped over him coming out the door- the other turian had barricaded himself in the nook under the stairs. Garrus knelt swiftly next to him and despite seeing the damage and knowing better, he was still pulling medigel out of its compartment on his armor until Ripper's hand gripped his arm. He shook his head.

"I'm already dead sir, the rest of me is simply taking its own time to catch up. It feels as if I have been this way a long time... but I had not thought that it would actually happen." Ripper's expression was somewhere between a grimace and laughter, splatters of sapphire blood across his face a cruel mockery of colony markings.

"Stay with me damn it!" The rest of the room was already dead, a quick look had told him that- but there was still one person here breathing and he'd be damned if he'd let him go. But as tenuous as the grip on his arm was, it stopped him from trying to save him. He knew it was too late, they both did.

Ever the soldier Ripper forced himself to keep talking despite the pain it put him in. "The mercenaries are planning how to act now that they have realized you weren't here." His eyes were drifting shut, Garrus had to lean in to understand him. "Get out while you still can. ... It has been an honor, sir."

His grip finally released, but there was no need to try and heal him now. Garrus gave himself a few moments to collect himself before rising and walking into the rest of the room. The soles of his boots were dyed four colors by the end of it but he checked every one of them. Seven dead men on the main floor. Eight if you counted Sensat, who he passed on the stairs. The batarian has taken a round to the throat, and he noted grimly that at least he still had his eyes when he died. Three of his men still hadn't been accounted for, there was still a chance... He followed a trail of greenish blood up the stairs through to the upper level and cut into a side room.

* * *

He left the room even more weighted down than he had been when he entered it. Erash had been bleeding out badly but still gritting his teeth and assembling one last batch of bombs (a deadly present for whatever bastard came to get his corpse) as he told Garrus what he knew. The mercs had known who they were and what to bring to neutralize the troublesome members- Melanis had gone down under rocket fire in the infirmary, what was left of his physiology blown everywhere in a horrid red splash and, shit, Garrus had seen the common room. He'd repeated the comment from Ripper about Sidonis turning on them, but with infinitely more anger.

"The little bastard turned traitor and sold us to the highest bidder- I knew we should have left him on Deinech." His hands were rapidly loosing their coordination as his roughly patched wounds continues to bleed a viscous green, anger and the encroaching veil of death clouding his tone.

Garrus had the urge to just sit down with his hands on his head but he couldn't so he compromised in leaning against the wall with his rifle trained on the door, watching the salarian's back as he pushed the last charge aside. "I can't believe that."

"If you don't want to believe it go ahead, but it's what happened. If you live through this do me a favor and figure it out so you can find him to put a bullet in his brain for Mel and Sensat and the rest of us."

Not long after that something important finally gave out despite all the medigel he'd used to buy himself a little more time to work, and Garrus had lost another friend. Walking by the infirmary confirmed what Erash had said about Melanis as well. No matter how heavy the urge was there wasn't time to give into his building rage (another crew, he was loosing another crew) and slam his fist into the wall. He still had one squadmate unaccounted for, and with a heavy pit of dread in his gizzard he pushed through the kicked open door to the younger turian's quarters.

The dead face he'd been expecting to find staring at him wasn't there. No corpse, no blood, no terrified green eyes, no signs of struggle, no sign of him at all in the base- just the accusations of two of his men on their deathbeds. What he needed right now was time to think but _Spirits _he didn't have time, there was no telling when the mercs would come back and he wanted to have Erash's last gift set and ready by the time that happened. All of the options for what had happened to Lantar were bad, either dead or turned or in the hands of whomever had left him in the state he was in the prior evening.

He only noticed the terminal in the room was still on when he was about to leave- whoever had used it last had shut it but forgotten to power it down. Breaking the encryption was child's play, leaving the last user's history laid out at the whim of a keystroke. Extranet sites, messages- there was still an unsent one stored in the databanks. He flicked it open, hoping for answers.

* * *

Sidonis jerked awake in a cold sweat, not entirely sure where the hell he was or why for a few seconds.

"This one would entreat you to kindly remove yourself from it's wife's space." a floaty voice rumbled politely somewhere off to the side. The middle aged-batarian woman he'd jabbed in the chest with his elbow spurs was decidedly less polite and threatened to shank him- he babbled out a quick apology and backed away from his seat for a safe distance.

Window, window sounded good- Lantar moved hastily through the tangle of knees and tentacles in the aisle to stare out at the blackness. Omega's red light was long out of view but he could still feel it hovering oppressively in his head, judging him through the haze of his dream. It sounded insane, but he would have sworn he'd heard someone scream his name.

He didn't feel like sleeping after that, and stood staring out the window for the rest of the ride.


	7. In Which Nobody's Happy

A week in the first hotel room was all he lasted before he made the mistake of looking up Archangel on the Omega news sites, and then the owner of the place threw him out on his ass for destroying shit that didn't belong to him in a fit of grief. He moved as often as a quarian after that: a night here, a few days there, drifting off to another district or another colony in a haze. Occasionally he thought about killing himself. It never happened for one reason or the other- in truth he didn't want to die, but he was having trouble remembering why. It wasn't like he did anything worthwhile- he drank when he couldn't sleep, he counted the cracks in whatever ceiling was over his bed, he woke up in cold sweats whenever he did sleep with the voices of dead friends cursing him, same old same old.

He realized of course that Garrus wasn't actually dead maybe a month or so later, because no one had his body. They would have wanted that trophy, but none of the merc groups even had so much as a piece of his armor to throw up on the extranet to gloat about. And no one knew his name either- remains would have been scanned for that kind of thing. The feeling the realization gave him was two-tone, somewhere between joy and abject terror and that's about when he decided to disappear.

Finding a source that could help him that seemed legitimate was slow work, and even once he did the service was shit so he had a lot of downtime between communications. He was too nervous to go out with his old Boss back on the scene gunning for him, so with all that time just sitting on his ass in his shitty hotel room he ended up signing up for a good turian porn service. After looking up Archangel's supposed fate his libido had hit rock bottom, but it seemed to be returning now. You know, because he was a horrible excuse for a person. It wasn't as if he could loathe himself much more than he already did, might as well get off while he was at it.

The one he settled on was expensive, but it wasn't like he had anything else to splurge on besides booze. Everywhere he slept was a shithole and he barely tasted his food, he had no friends, he didn't go anywhere but bars... Fuck, it was a nice one, run straight off Epyrus by turians with turian tastes which meant military organization and efficiency- it remembered his favorite companies and actors and kinks and he didn't even need to read titles most of the time because they were all color-coded. He was browsing through the system's recommendations while waiting on a call when a red title interrupted the varying shades of purple and blue and he had to check to remember what genre the color even stood for.

Xeno porn? What the fuck was _xeno porn_ doing on his dash? Purely out of curiosity about the mishap he clicked the link.

Lantar recognized the turian actor on the cover immediately as one of his favorites, a pale grey Palaveni native who knew what to do with his dick and was willing to put it in anything as long as he was on top- but his normal white colony markings had been obscured and drawn over with a painfully familiar geometric blue set.

Oh, fuck.

The summary he'd skipped at first confirmed it- Veral Irin was playing Garrus Vakarian. He was downloading it before he even had the chance to think about how fucked up this was.

A flick of his talon sent the vid to the screen on the wall and he already had his pants off before it registered between innuendoes that 'heroes of the geth invasion of the Citadel' meant the human was suppose to be Commander Shepard. She didn't look at all like the woman he'd seen in the photo in Garrus' room, her proportions were almost turian in slenderness with her exaggerated human chest providing some of the visual weight of a carapace. They'd gotten the skin and the hair right in color but that was about it, the intensity she seemed to have had even in a smile in a snapshot was entirely absent.

Shit, was he seriously thinking about watching porn of the man he'd betrayed and the dead woman he was in love with? What the fuck was _wrong _with him? Not that fucking far gone, he wasn't that much of a... but when he was moving to shut it off Veral/Garrus purred in a well-faked Cipritine accent to introduce himself and started breaking the seals on his armor piece by piece and...

He was lying on his back in the artificial darkness with the heady smell of his own seed flooding his olfactory senses when his omnitool buzzed on the floor. Sticky hands fumbled for the thing as Lantar rolled across the mattress, managed to get the com patched through and swallowed heavily to stabilize his voice before answering. "Yeah?"

"Livius, we've got everything set up for you. The credits cleared and you've got tickets to the Citadel in the morning. Nice doing business with you, enjoy your new life." The guy on the other end hung up before Sidonis even had the time to register the use of his fake name- no fucking people skills from the guy who was running this operation, but his methods worked.

So he was going to the Citadel. Heh. He'd never been there before, there were millions of people there right? Should be easy to hide one pathetic little turian in. For maybe the hundredth time he asked himself why he was doing all of this, but he'd started to figure out it was because Cassius had gone to a lot of effort to keep him alive and he had to at least try.

... He'd liked Cassius. It wasn't just the sex, he'd gotten to like the time around that too. He liked drinking with him, laying there watching him, listening to him talk- not only for the accent but the things he'd say. True the guy was a terrorist and a traitor but what the hell could Lantar complain about that after what he'd done to his own friends, with no greater reasoning than keeping his miserable ass alive? He loved Garrus, as fucked up as that sounded with what he's done to the guy... but he'd liked Cassius, and he wouldn't have minded if the merc had taken that second ticket for himself. _Damn, but I don't really deserve that do I._

A few minutes of almost peaceful quiet was all he gave himself before pulling his tool up again- he should probably figure out what time it was so he'd know when to go. And delete the fake Garrus porn while he was at it, that was just a level of fucked up he didn't need to be indulging in. He knew even as he did it that he'd probably end up buying the damn thing again at some later point, but a temporary victory was still a victory and he had few enough of those these days.

* * *

Compromised?

How the _fuck _had he been compromised?

Shit he didn't go anywhere, he didn't talk to anyone, he barely saw any fellow turians from Invictus who might have been able to recognize him from his childhood and he'd fucking blown up everyone he knew in Vult, how the _fuck-_

Clothes, he had to put on clothes, something that didn't stink for the meeting he needed to leave for _right now- _he was halfway through fastening his shirt when he realized it was the outfit Cassius had given him. Of fucking _course_ it was the outfit Cassius had given him, it was the one damn thing he felt compelled to take care of anymore. He didn't have the fucking time to think about this, he really didn't.

Lantar walked through the wards nervously, the bright colors and fluttering conversations of the people around him only making him jumpier than usual- the fact that he hadn't slept for two days probably didn't help. At least he wasn't drunk, though if he was he probably would have been able to sleep and shit, fucking _shit- _On and on his head spun in circles like that until he managed to find the spot. If he didn't sit down he was going to collapse and he hunched over heavily on a bench with the thick taste of fear in his mouth.

The polite sound of a quarian woman clearing her throat nearby broke him out of his spiral- that was the signal right?- and he stood to face her. Huh, she didn't look like any of the contacts Fade liked to use, they had always been tough ex-cop types or volus on the opposite end of the spectrum, and while she was small she had a shotgun slung on her hip that Weaver would have been proud of. It was hard to tell with her alien physiology and the mask and all, but she looked almost as uncomfortable standing there as he did.

...Wait, did Fade ever even send women? Something felt... off about all of this, but he was too anxious to be able to think too far into it.

"Look, the sooner this is over the better, I can pay-" Lantar has been talking so fast he was jabbering until _she _stepped out from behind the quarian, who hightailed it out of there as speech completely deserted him for pants-shitting terror. He didn't question how she was alive or knew who he was or why she was here- there were exactly two thoughts able to cling to existence in his head as he stared at her. One, he was right and she looked nothing like the woman in the porno. And Two, _oh fuck I'm going to die._

"Sidonis, we need to talk."

The human woman's voice was water calm but her face was _not happy _and all of her_ not happy_ was directed solely at him. He blathered something quickly and tried to bolt but her grip was insane for someone so small and squishy and it held him in place like a vice. Standing far too close for comfort, she locked eyes with him and spoke with a downright threatening level of casual "There's three hundred thousand credits worth of sniper rifle trained on your head right now- I should know, I bought him it- and you should really listen to me if you want to live."

Well... he wasn't going to argue with the woman. They sat on the bench again, her as calm as a statue and him with his hands and mandibles fidgeting so badly he couldn't- nothing would come out of his mouth but panicked sputtering so she started the conversation again.

"My name is Shepard, and a friend of mine wants you dead."

"It's Garrus, isn't it."

"Yes."

"Thank the Spirits" came out in a rush, a hand pressing over his face. "For a while there, I thought he was dead."

"He nearly was." The expression on her face was grim as she stared ahead. "But he's alive, and he wants you dead. Normally when he tells me he wants to kill someone I'm more than happy to make it happen, but that's not happening this time if I have anything to say about it."

Lantar jerked slightly in surprise to stare at her. "What- didn't he tell you what I-" Oh fuck, he didn't tell her he... Spirits, don't let the woman know about that, about the whole horrible...

"He told me that you sold him out to the mercenaries on Omega, that every one on his squad but you died and now he wants to remedy that." Thank the Spirits, she didn't know about the whole illicit attempted affair disaster. Small comforts. "But this isn't like Doctor Saleon. This is way too personal for him and it's fucking him up more than shooting anyone is going to help."

For a reason he couldn't distinguish she grimaced, digging in her ear and- oh. Shepard sighed, rolling her com between her many-fingered hands. The ends of her lips rose slightly but there wasn't any humor there he could see. "Could barely hear myself think he's yelling at me so much about being in his shot."

Without warning that expression was gone and she had locked eyes with him and Lantar realized that he couldn't move if he tried- there was an _air _about the woman that was absolutely commanding, the fire in her gaze shaming the flame of her hair. "I don't care about what happens to you. I don't care if you live or die, but I've seen what happens to soldiers who kill people who used to be their friends. If he needs you dead for his peace then so be it, but I'm not having him take that burden on his shoulders."

Torfan. Fuck, she was the one on Torfan wasn't she.

"I love that man, but ever since I've found him again he's been so wound up in what you did he won't even speak to me, and I'm scared to death for what this anger is doing to him. So either he decides to let you go or I shoot you myself, but either way this ends today." And she put the com back in and reactivated it.

After that she and Garrus seemed to be having an argument about her cutting him out of the conversation that he could only hear half of and he stared in quiet misery at his knees. Whatever last stupid, insane hope he'd held on to had been crushed by those four words from her. Not like it mattered. He was fucked, and whatever Spirits had delegated to bring Commander Shepard back from the void wouldn't bother with him.

"-Damn it Garrus, you're so blinded by your own anger at yourself that you're-"

That jerked Lantar out of himself, grim shock on his features. "What? Don't fucking tell me that he's- this is _my _fault! I'm the asshole that did it, I'm the one that-" Shit, what else could he say? The few miserable things he could try to defend himself with about being a lovesick idiot he couldn't bear to say in front of this woman. He couldn't say anything.

The realization that this was really happening and that his life extended out no further than a matter of minutes didn't come as a rush, just a quiet cold knowledge that couldn't be shaken. Oh. So this was it.

He stopped trying to defend himself and pushed to his feet to lean heavily on the railing as he just started listing off the reasons he should die: the sleepless misery, the guilt that swallowed everything else, his shiftless uselessness, his unflagging cowardice. "I'm a dead man anyway. Just... get it over with." Lantar let his forehead sink to touch the metal of the railing, its coolness washing the last of his nerves away save one quiet regret.

_Sorry Cass. Looks like I'm disappointing you too._

He was ready for the bullet. It just didn't come.

"Sidonis?"

"... huh?" Why would she still be talking to him?

"I said he's letting you go."

He stared at her. Halfway through her repeating the statement he realized she was no longer standing in the line of fire she'd kept herself in their whole conversation, and he was remaining unshot. Fuck.

"... oh." He stood straight again, his legs trembling under him. "I... Tell him I..." Tell him what, what the fuck could he say? "Tell him... I'll try to make this up to him, make this right. Somehow."

He left. No one shot him. His hands wouldn't stop shaking.

The lights of the wards passed in a neon blur as he wandered aimlessly, no real idea how long he walked or where or why. All that registered was that somehow he was still alive, that Garrus didn't want him dead, and that he had to... somehow he had to...

His feet had put him at whatever this ward's C-sec office was, and there was a turian officer giving him an odd look for hovering wordlessly on his doorstep for three minutes. Sidonis swallowed through the heaviness in his throat and spoke up- he barely recognized his own voice.

"I... I want to report a crime."


	8. Back to Good

A/N- the real name for the three parts here is "In which things almost seem normal/ Until it all goes wrong again/ Back to good", but that's entirely too long. "When it all goes Wrong Again" by Everclear and "Back to Good" by Matchbox 20 are the songs running through my head for these bits.

* * *

Time went by much more quickly after that. The human in charge of the unit he'd walked into apparently had a habit of trying to rehabilitate young offenders- there was a sulky drell he saw from time to time who word had it had turned himself in on attempted murder. They worked on the same kind of volunteer status as each other but the teen never spoke much, and frankly Lantar was relieved by that. He tried to talk to his coworkers as little as possible because there were so many questions he didn't want to answer in his past. Thankfully he was mostly left alone and given busy work.

Working kept him hustling enough that he collapsed in his bed at night and actually started sleeping unaided again most of the time, which helped him to cut down heavily on his drinking. There were still nightmares on and off for a few months but they were less frequent after Garrus' pardon and eventually disappeared all together.

This was the first actual job he'd ever had, seeing as he'd dropped out of the military as a teenager and gone straight into merc work before ending up helping start Archangel. There was a while there where he teetered awkwardly on the edge between the half life he'd been living the last few months and having responsibilities but he managed. Shit, he was even able to go out on a one-night-stand again- it wasn't great but it didn't end with a pistol in his face. You wouldn't believe the good that could do for a guy's psyche... He started finally talking to the people he worked with- not about the past or why he was there, just mundane shit like he'd rejoined the land of the living. It was almost like being normal.

The Normandy docked at the Citadel a few times after that but still no one came to kill him. Once he spotted them in the distance breaking up an argument but other than that he didn't see either of them and it was a hell of a relief. Lantar stayed quiet and did his job, helped make this one ward a little better than it had been. Some of the cops started inviting him to come for drinks with them after their shift. One of the group- a middle aged asari named Linaria- had been a partner of Garrus' for a while and it unnerved him, but she didn't seem like a spy that had been sicced on him. So the third time they asked he accepted.

A lounge called Dark Star was the local blue-collar place, nicer than the place they'd all met up with Archangel back in the day (just as loud but al least the music was better) and it was leagues above the dives where he'd been trying to drink himself to death in the inbetween months. They'd mostly talk shop, Linaria would have her civilian husband talk about all the shit he overheard from the politicians in his office and they would laugh about the bullshit and the bad dancers. Lantar mostly avoided alcohol, though he could occasionally nurse a beer if he was in a particularly good mood.

He liked the Ridgefields, they were good people. Lamont had a wicked sense of humor, and he even got to like Hestia to a degree once she stopped hitting on him. Of course, then she just started trying to set him up with other turian guys and that got all kinds of uncomfortable before Linaria cuffed her and told her to mind her own business. Damn nice lady.

He had friends and a job, he had a decent place for a cheap wards apartment, and Bailey was asking him if he was interested in trying out for becoming a real officer instead of just a lackey. Garrus had... well if he hadn't quite forgiven him he'd been willing to give him another chance. Life was pretty good.

* * *

They were all in the Dark Star again when the news broke. No one noticed at first- the holo screens were all tuned to a human/batarian football match that promised to lead to a river of bloodshed in the stands, but a salarian in the group had his omnitool on to check stocks and he caught the news.

"Looks like someone's finally cleaning up the shithole, damn."

Lamont snorted over his whiskey "They're burning down Purgatory?"

"Surprisingly close but no. Try Afterlife instead." The salarian was downright grinning. "Looks like someone's throwing a coup on Omega and they're hitting everyone at once- it's not just Aria, there's ships from all three merc groups dogfighting it out with someone else out there."

The reactions around the bar were varied but Sidonis was the only one who froze. Someone else asked the bartender to change one of the feeds, and he sat in rigid silence as the reporter on the screen tried to talk about what was going on in the dark center of the Terminus. Omega glowed its ever-present dangerous red through the silence of space and the ships in five colors clashing and exploding around it. A turian across the bar made a joke about not even thinking anyone in the Pack knew how to fly- a bunch of people laughed. Lantar didn't.

When one of the invading ships came broadside to the camera and revealed itself as Cerberus, something cold ran down his skin and he downed the rest of his beer to chase it away.

When the merc ships were decimated and the survivors fled instead of continuing to fight, leaving anyone not fast enough to get picked off, he ordered another.

And when the mammoth Cerberus flagship hovered unchallenged releasing troops into the station to clear out all undesirables (nonhumans. They'd be killing all the nonhumans who put up a fight), he proceeded to get shitfaced drunk for the first time in... a long time. Drunk with his head on the bar and misery crawling under his plates was a familiar position and he tried not to think about why because it would only make it worse.

"Sid, you alright?"

Hestia, fucking genius. Fuck. But before the other turian could say anything else an older female voice cut her off- "Does he _look _alright? Damnit kid, you need to go home. Mark, help me over here hon."

Vaguely he remembered Linaria and her husband hefting him off of his stool and out of the bar. The rest of the trip back he couldn't really recall, just that when he was vomiting in the bathroom of his apartment some time later the asari woman was crouched next to him, worry on her normally hard-as-nails face.

...That was all that was in him, right? It was done? It seemed so, for now, and he sunk against the cool tile of the wall next to the toilet. Fuck his head was killing him. Someone else stepped just into the little room- her husband- and handed a bottle off to her.

"Sidonis, you with me?"

He nodded weakly. Linaria displayed the little bottle for him. "Everything you had was expired so Mark picked up some more turian hangover meds. Think you can keep it down?" When he nodded again and tried to sit up straight she helped, and gave him a cup of water along with the pills, which he downed. It would be a while until it worked though (they'd invented instant hangover-recovery meds but they accumulated fuckawful side effects if you used them too much, these were the safe normal kind) and the room didn't spin as much when he closed his eyes so he closed them. To get the flat of his neck against the coolness of the wall he had to tuck his chin into his cowl so his fringe wouldn't get in the way. Shit, he felt... about as awful as he felt.

It was quiet for a stretch after that until she broke it. "Care to tell me what the hell happened back there kid?"

Fuck, his tongue was heavy in his mouth, slurring his speech. "I... I have a friend, back on Omega." Could asari interpret subvocals? His were trembling with an awful pain he wouldn't let out in his words, but for the life of him he couldn't remember right now what species could really hear and understand the depths of flanging beyond a buzz. Her reactions didn't tell him either way, she was too good of a cop, and she just nodded and sat with him there.

The human in the doorway cleared his throat and spoke up again, he needed to get home to check on the girls and was she staying? A little longer love, go ahead. He could hear how close they were just by the affection in their voices. You know, he was really starting to hate love and he was still drunk enough to say it out loud. "I'm tired of getting screwed by love, seriously. The first guy I fall for it ends in a fucking disaster and now he hates me, and the next one I don't... we only had a few months, I don't even know if I loved him and all of this happens..." There are talons clutching his head and they're his, though he doesn't remember putting them there. "Shit, he was suppose to be _safe_ there, this shit isn't fair. Cassius why couldn't you just-"

There's the urge to bash his head back into the wall but he's just sober enough to realize it won't help. Instead he balls his talons into fists and presses them against the recesses of his eyes. "I know what I did was unforgivable, I know they're dead because of me, I never fucking forget that, but just once I wanted something good to happen, just once..."

A small soft hand touches his arm. "I think you should stay with us tonight hon. I don't want to leave you alone like this. Won't breathe a word of it to anyone else, and we'll make you breakfast in the morning ok?"

Pride should have made him fight it, normally it would have, but he didn't have it in him to fight anymore when she was just trying to be kind.

On her own she got him across the ward back to her family's apartment and settled him on the couch. She ended up sitting up most of the night with him letting him talk. Lantar couldn't remember the conversation in the morning, but there was indeed breakfast.

* * *

He was ok after that. Really, he was ok. He was ok right? Yeah, of course he was. There were very few drunken stupor incidents anyway, although part of that could have been because he'd always associated the guy with just such things and this time he wasn't going to show up beside him with a smile and take him home.

Anyway, he didn't have time to dwell on it after long- Aria and her people showed up on their doorstep only a few weeks before the first flood of batarian refugees started building up on the docks proclaiming with wide-eyed terror that horrible space monsters from the void were here to kill them all. Whatever, Lantar didn't have the time to worry about it because he was too damn busy. C-sec needed all hands on deck, even his relatively inexperienced ones, to deal with the sudden influx of people on the station and he was kept running.

With most of the best experienced officers tasked with keeping an eye on the disposed Queen of Omega and the mercs he ended up spending most of his time on the docks, helping batarian kids find the rest of their families. Kids liked him, he was quick with a smile or a joke and he spoke to them like they were adults on the same level as him- he was still in his early 20s, barely out of childhood himself and hating being treated like a kid was a lot of the reason he ran away in the first place. The decision had proven catastrophically stupid but that was neither here nor there... it just meant that he understood. Grief he wasn't as good at dealing with, but not being a proper officer he had the time to just sit with them and be there when they needed someone to weep and rage at.

Every day was spent like that with the growing number of refugees that had to be moved into temporary housing on one of the docks as more species started to pour in, and it made for a hectic few days when they started getting humans jammed in next to the batarians. Fun, fun. Evenings were spent increasingly holed up with his terminal searching through the names of the incoming for the families of his kids and... one for himself. Unfortunately he realized that he had never gotten his surname, and while Cassius wasn't a terribly common turian name it still left him with leads every week that went nowhere- the birth place or the age was always wrong, and it left him drained with every failure.

Garrus... Garrus he didn't worry about. He would be with Shepard wherever she was and they could fucking take care of each other just fine. Shit, he hated thinking about that- he wished the guy well and all, and honestly he didn't have anything against the human- she was there first anyway- but _shit _it sucked to think about.

Things only really got crazy when Palaven was hit. After that the time was a blur- so many of the C-sec personnel and brass were on edge at every scrap of news about the homeworld it left the aliens and some of the colony kids to keep things stable. Made for a hell of a time but he did end up getting laid in the deal.

The guy was an officer from another precinct who showed up in the Dark Star drunk and needing to blow off steam from the stress of worrying about his family back on Palaven. Lantar got the feeling the dark plated older male hadn't been with another guy since his mandatory service days by how awkward his positioning was and how bad he was at meeting his needs physically (rarely hit the right spots and never touched his dick once, what the hell?). Fortunately his voice was so close to Garrus' it was frightening- he'd nearly jumped out of his skin when he'd first heard it behind him at the bar- and he could make him come just by moaning. Even if he was moaning his wife's name, whose coloring Lantar realized he shared exactly when he saw a photo in the guy's apartment. It didn't bother him much, shit it helped him feel a little less fucked up as he cried out someone else's name while another man's cock was in him.

Neither of them ever asked questions, they didn't want to know. They met up like that a few more times and slipped off silently to one or the other's place, never even exchanging names- there were no delusions between them about what this was. A desperate grab at needy memories of another, a few moments of sweet release in a painful world, a warm body where the one you really cared about was suppose to be but wasn't.


	9. Letting Go

It happened a few weeks after Earth was hit. He was heading down in the morning with his datapads of names for the usual rounds of his various refugee kids who were still waiting for word on their families- the number of species he dealt with had ballooned, but everything else was the same. Lantar was just moving through the turian section of the camp to find Juno when he heard the voice.

The first thought in his head was to wonder what the guy he'd been sleeping with was doing on the docks- he hadn't once seen him on his rounds in the year-ish he'd been on the Citadel. It wasn't very long until the question withered up and died in his head when he turned a corner and saw a tall, handsome, familiar figure standing at the back of one of the impromptu meeting rooms and he froze fast in a panic because holy motherfucker it was Garrus, in the flesh not fifteen meters away_._

Getting laid regularly again had curbed Lantar's libido, and there was still a healthy dose of fear in seeing the man despite the pardon, but... damn. The new heavy armor, the wicked scars across his face, the entirety of his demeanor and his stance, the confidence in his tone. Despite everything that seemed to be happening in the galaxy Garrus was more at ease than he'd ever seen him in his life and it was... compelling.

Why was obvious, even before he spotted the woman leaning against the prefab behind him, the only human in a room of turians. Thousands of years of civilization hadn't managed to remove the most basic of turian body language and his was beaming possession of this woman as his mate to anyone who cared to look. She said something from her casual slouch, his former Boss turned around and smiled and he just looked so fucking _happy._ Seeing him like that, it was...

It made him happy too. It really did.

Not a full happy, there was a sense of loss as the human woman took Garrus' hands in hers and they smiled at each other, and he knew that he would always love him. But it was enough to finally let him go.

Linaria caught up with him when he was treading through the rest of the turian refugee camp to tell him they'd found Juno's parents and the girl wanted to show off the little brother she had always talked about. Apparently the Normandy had come across their drifting escape shuttle on their way to the Citadel and towed them here.

Lantar smiled through the ache in his chest, and told himself that things were going to be alright one way or the other.

* * *

After that he started to pull his life together. He formally put in for officer training, cleaned the shit out of his apartment and finally got his fading tattoos retouched to their original vibrancy. He called things off with the Palaveni officer because it was just a dream and he was done with wallowing in self-indulgent longing for someone he could never have, done being fucked up like that. And he threw himself into work. Results were mixed there- one of his kids overdosed on sand, two more found their families intact, more lost parts or all of them. He did what he could.

Linaria was a damn saint, that was all there was to it. Every time the Normandy docked after that first incident she would show up with some task for him to help her with on the other end of the Ward that would end coincidentally after Garrus had left his patrol area. Hard-assed ex-commando she was indeed, but she'd taken a liking to the fucked up colony kid washout and she kept an eye on him. How she knew when he needed to get the hell away from the docks he never asked and she never offered, but he appreciated it more than he knew how to explain. Really he was happy for them, but that didn't mean he ever wanted to see them together like that again.

Of course giving up on Garrus had made other concerns more pressing. When he went down to the camp where the Suns were to ask around about Cassius either Mrs. Ridgefield was psychic or he'd spilled something while drunk (he could never decide which was preferable) but she just... knew it wasn't something he could do on his own and she was there as his backup. The Spirits must have been smiling on him because he didn't run into any of his torturers, and with a heavy wave of relief he overheard that the terrifying young asari girl who had broken him had been killed during the whole Archangel incident. _That_ was a load of nightmares off his shoulders.

Wandering through the crowd the outworlders were easy to spot with their tats and their accents and the way they kept to themselves. Even as small as the prefab dextro mess hall was, even packed with other turian Suns filling the place, they managed to keep themselves apart from everything.

For possibly the first time in his life Sidonis was glad for his birthplace as he sat down at the table the Separatists had gathered at. They eyed him for his uniform but didn't say anything- he clearly wasn't a real officer and they weren't worried about some rookie. When he asked them about one of their own they gave him a variety of odd looks, but they didn't throw him out- if his tats had been from a Hierarchy world, he strongly got the vibe that they would have. But Invictus was an outworld as well so he actually got answers. Several of the turians admitted to knowing Cassius but none had seen him or heard from him since just before the coup. His surname was narrowed down to two possibilities- Aurelius and Gallus, though there was disagreement between individuals which he had gone by when. Lantar spent days after that digging all the way through the incoming refugee name archives with his new short list, searching, hoping-

The day he finally gave up looking for him he called out from work. There's no weeping or breaking of furniture or punching holes in the walls, no drinking himself half to death. He just sits stone sober on the floor with the lights turned down low and his knees pulled up to his chest, watching old news footage from Vallum on his omnitool. Not the Reaper attack, not the Blast- before that, years back, hoping to see the guy one last time before trying to get on with his life without either of the men he would have wanted to spend it with.

Three times, maybe, he spotted him. The first he wasn't sure about, the footage was almost 25 years old and the turian in question is tangled in the middle of some protest on its way to turning into a riot. The coloring and his tats are right and the odds of another Parthia-born turian being on that side of the fight are low, but he barely looks older than Lantar himself. He realized with a start that he simply can't picture the man that young- logic or no, he was always well into his 40s when he thought of him.

The second time was from years later, the clip featuring a green-tattooed man arguing angrily with a reporter about some political thing, a pale fringe tattooed with small gold bands Lantar had become well versed in those four months at the back of the shot. He could barely understand what they were talking about but Green Tats gets so upset over what the reporter says he actually starts to assault the woman until Cassius pulls him off. The reporter had been jostled badly enough that the camera was knocked off focus to only show him from the waist down, but that familiar deep rumble comes through the tool's audio ports clear as crystal. "Sorry ma'am, he's had a hard time. Kid of his was in that building during the raid."

The last time wasn't about the rebels at all, just some file footage of a public square that must have been reduced to rubble since then- the shot was dated 2168, two years before the Vallum Blast. A voiceover talks about a seasonal observance at the monument coming up that week and he's visible in the back of the plaza standing with another turian, their foreheads touching. Cassius is smiling jovially and Janus (it couldn't be anyone else the way he was looking at him) looks so fucking serious gazing up at him that the two of them really should clash but they just... don't. They look right together. Cassius touches his face. The shot pans on. Lantar rewinds it and pauses, at a loss for what to feel.

A quick series of keystrokes saves the three clips on his omnitool and he spends the night alternating between watching the current day news (shit, shit and shit), going back through the clips (he'd thought Janus would be taller, but the dark plated turian barely came up to Cass' chin) and staring at the ceiling. Tomorrow he'll get back to work, there's a lot that needs to be done when the galaxy seems to be threatening to fall apart. Tonight he'll sit alone with his thoughts of what could have been or should have been and other nonsense for the morning to wash away.

* * *

C-sec training went pretty easily for him for the most part. What he lacked in discipline (which was substantial) he mad up for in skill- you didn't run with Archangel for a year and a half if you didn't know what you were doing. With as lackadaisical as the formalities had been back then when they weren't in actual combat mode in those days, unlearning bad habits and respecting authority came hard for him but most of that had been dealt with in his initial volunteer work.

There was something different in him now though that the people around him noticed, like a switch had finally turned back on and he'd remembered how to be driven again. All of that was tested soon enough when he and the other trainees in his class were at C-Sec HQ for a routine meeting and the explosion went off.

Lantar knew immediately that it was a bomb, every nerve in his body screamed it- shit what the _fuck_- and he was on his feet. Most of the other trainees seemed ignorant, confused. Only one other had gone on alert, and their asari instructor was the same way- she stopped talking at once and unholstered her pistol, face grim as she ordered them to stay exactly where the hell they were and slipped out the door. They didn't have very long to wait however until another explosion went off. Closer this time, and fuck it he didn't have a weapon on him. They were too early in their training to be given their own weapons and he'd left everything but the clothes on his back in his quarters in Kima when he ran, and being a fucking genius he never managed to buy himself another gun...

His internal monologue of strung together expletives was immediately silence at the weight of a pistol magically appearing in his hands, green eyes darting up in confusion to see mile deep black ones staring intently at him. "Thanks" Sidonis murmured- fuck, nice gun- as the drell (Krios right?) pulled a matching pistol out of his coat for himself.

"Stay with them, I'll scout this out." and with that the teenager disappeared out the door in a flutter of his coat like some damn cabal ninja. Shit wasn't going to stay safe here long so he barked at the rest of them that this was serious and they needed to stop looking confused and start getting away from the door as he quickly tried to make himself some cover.

How much time passed? No fucking clue. Every second behind his makeshift desk barricade trying to get the others to shut the fuck up and get down felt like an eternity until the door slammed open again to the stench of gunfire and blood. Lantar's instinct to not trust and expect the worst paid off- what came through the door was human and armored in white and gold and he was unloading his clip into its torso before it got all the way into the room. The invader's body dropped and provided a barrier just big enough to keep the other three from being able to charge right in and mow them all down. A shotgun blast went barely over his head and caught one of the trainees in the back- no fucking time to look to see it, the screams were enough to verify someone was dead- he just rolled, aimed and shot three more rounds straight into another human's visor. The last two were taken out between him and an asari who had shaken out of her shock enough to use her biotics before she was shot and wounded in the side.

As the last of their attackers collapsed and the hallway went silent again he leapt over his barricade to scavenge weapons and sinks off the corpses to spread among their survivors. When he'd been shooting he didn't have the spare reserves to think too far about who he was shooting _at_, but crouched down prying a SMG out of a glove he saw the logo. No freezing, no gasp- he just pulled the weapons out and tossed them to the trainees, enough for the under half of them who knew how to handle a gun. After a thought, he tossed the pistol to one of them as well.

The turian woman who'd reacted the most sensibly to his warnings- Leta, he remembered- caught it and handed off her Mattock to an asari, trilling appreciatively at the upgrade she'd been given. She looked back up to him with a browplate raised. "Aren't you going to keep it? It's a good gun."

Lantar chuckled without humor, and she caught the cold anger in his eyes as he hefted an Eviscerator up from underneath one of the troopers. "I need something a little more violent right now."

Looking over their group he found it a cruel irony, both the fact that he was de-facto in charge of this little band and that if you counted the drell they were an even dozen. Just like old times indeed. Whether they could survive any better than the last group he was part of he had no illusions on- he doubted anyone else in the room with him had even killed before, and by the sounds outside they were up against some heavy shit. But these were the motherfuckers that had killed Cassius and he was going to take out as many of them as he could before they took him down.

"Alright everybody, let's get the fuck out of here and start moving."


	10. Promises to Keep

Running through the halls was chaos. Bullets were clattering from every other corner and Lantar was working on a hair trigger at the head of the group, switching between an Avenger he'd pulled off a dead officer and his Eviscerator depending on the range. Leta and an asari took up the rear. All but one of the five other turians with them had spent some of their mandatory service time in the military so they knew the right way to hold a gun, even if most of them were out of practice. Their odds were still shit- a nemesis caught one of the salarians in the back of the head not two minutes out of their classroom, leaving his brother splattered in the green mess and screaming. Sidonis tried to talk him the fuck down but another sniper round grazed his cheek plate and he barely avoided getting killed before the three asari pinpointed her position and took the bitch out. Blood screaming in his ears, Lantar solved the problem of the panicked sibling by knocking him out with a harder than necessary punch and tossed him to the turian without a gun. Geron had done his service as a politician's secretary, reaaaaally useful right now.

How many Cerberus did they kill? No fucking clue. It was all a game of shoot and hide and scavenge from the dead and wrangle his mostly terrified trainees through the corridors. Shit. At some point in the process they'd become _his_ in his mind- his responsibility, his burden. Krios rejoined them like a shadow blown back into the group, just appearing next to him like he'd never left.

"I thought you were staying put?" the drell's hoarse voice called over as they darted through the hallway.

"Our location was shit and if we'd stayed there we'd all be dead. Don't give me that look- I've been doing this for years and I know what I'm taking about. Can you tell me what the flying fuck is going on?"

Those black eyes hardened again as another target appeared- Krios took out the engineer but not before he'd set up a turret. Lantar bellowed for everyone to duck but the wounded asari who had saved his ass back in the classroom wasn't fast enough and he cursed loudly as a spray of rounds took her in the chest. The two of them and Leta took the only safe firing positions on it as the rest of the group kept in cover and tried to watch the rear. It was a weak position but they couldn't move forward while the damn gun was there. For the tenth time in five minutes he cursed not having brought his armor or weapons with him from Omega- he'd kill for his old Vult sniper right about now.

"According to our instructor" Krios spoke as they were ducked down with live fire over their heads "they came in through the back docks with the help of traitors in the ranks and they're killing every officer they can find. There are pockets of resistance but they're faring badly."

Another shotgun blast at the turret and Lantar ducked to fit another sink in- damn thing was almost dead but not quite. "And her?"

"Dead, blood loss."

"Fuck."

"Indeed." Watching him reload the shotgun the drell's eyes narrowed slightly on him. "Where's the pistol? I would hope that you have not lost it, my father gave me that gun."

"Gave it to her, I'm not much of a fan of pistols. Wanted something that puts holes in murdering racist bastards faster."

Leta responded by popping up with perfect form to blow the turret away while it was still facing the two men, a snorted tone in her flanging "Then you're an idiot. This gun is better that either of the pieces you have."

"Yeah, I know. And I'm better than you, so I don't need the better gun too." She scowled at that but didn't argue, and they lead the group down the hall again. Four more troopers and a guardian went down before the three of them and their last two biotics- the three other armed turians were kept busy by another nemesis. Geron the secretary had managed to hack through some system to dig up the blueprints and was giving them directions on the way out- according to his map they were closing in on a door that would let them off in a ward.

That's when a roar like a truck in a tunnel soared over their heads in a rush of heat- the rocket taking out the ceiling of the hallway behind them and two of the turians who had been keeping up the rear with it. The remainder of the group froze in shock and sudden terror as an Atlas rounded the corner ahead to cut them off.

Fear was something Lantar was used to- he'd grown up with it during his childhood on that miserable excuse for a planet. The last few years and his time with Archangel however- they had honed it to a fine edge and the terror was mixed with adrenaline that sharpened everything. He was still scared, of course he was scared, but it drove him instead of hindering him.

"Bathroom, NOW!" It was a short door, under nine feet and the mech would never fit through- not a single person made a joke as they raced into the shelter. All eight of them made it in during the delay before the rapid fire of the mech's guns whirred into life. Vaguely Lantar was aware he'd been caught in the arm but he pushed it out of his mind and ducked on the inside of the doorway with his shotgun at the ready as he eyed the thing slowly close in on them. Every trainee who was left who could fight was with him waiting on his word and he felt a surge of pride. And you know what? He had a fucking plan.

"Alright here's what we do. I want all of you to stay in here and shoot the fuck out of that thing, aim for the joints. I'll be out in the hall drawing it's fire and trying to turn it around so you can get a better shot into the backs of its knees."

One of his classmates laughed. "Hell of a way to get yourself killed Sid. I mean you're good but you're not _that _good."

He'd been expecting something like that and had his trump card ready, whipping it out with a grin on his face "I spent eighteen months with Archangel, trust me when I say I've survived through worse than this."

It had the needed effect- the two asari and the drell looked intrigued and every turian in the room's jaw dropped- the secretary in the back looked almost ready to pass out. Show any good turian a son of Palaven turned vigilante and they'd turn their nose up at him, but put that same vigilante on a lawless hole like Omega and they'd cheer him on like their hometown clawball team. Invoking Garrus' legacy like this wasn't something he enjoyed doing, but being the second youngest person in the room (save maybe the salarian, but he was still unconscious and didn't count) he needed all the leverage he could get for a plan that sounded this asinine. Quickly to his feet then, the mech was getting uncomfortably close.

"Krios, Leta, cover me." and out he rushed. _Hell of a way to die indeed, but I plan on living through this one._

* * *

_Fuck_ this was insane. His plan was insane and he knew it but he made it to that first piece of cover and there was no going back now. The sharp blade of energized fear made him as alive as he'd ever felt- dodging rockets, running full tilt and shooting from the hip at it's weak spots. Krios might have had athleticism on his side but Lantar had experience, he'd taken down YIMRs on foot in the past and the principle here was the same: keep small and moving and hard to hit, shoot it and don't get shot. It went on like that for Spirits, six minutes? Six minutes of gunfire and rockets and near misses until there was the beautiful ear-splitting sound of an explosion and the thing went up in a glorious boom.

Every nerve he had was on fire with the rush of success, all of his senses running overtime- it's why he heard the shift in the rubble behind him. One of the two who'd been caught in the first rocket was still alive and he ran back to crouch down and dig her out.

He had just pulled a hunk of ceiling off her chest to let her breathe when heavy footfalls coming down the other end of the hallway at a run set off alarm bells. The only armored people with enough energy to run were Cerberus bastards and he wasn't damnwell ready to die yet.

A single fluid movement spun him on the flats of his boots to rain a wave of pulse-fire from his Avenger at the three figures approaching through the smoke. Their shields took all the damage in sudden flares of blue that quickly faded out again but not completely- a single rectangle of blue remained locked on him and he _recognized _that glow and oh-

"Fuck" he choked out, eyes wide.

"Hold your fire!" a flanged voice bellowed from the haze- and it was indeed Garrus Vakarian who stepped out of the smoke, Commander Shepard and another human alongside him. Those brilliant eyes stared right at him.

"_Spirits_ Sidonis, say something sooner next time. I almost shot you."

'Again' he nearly asked, or 'wouldn't be the first time' or so many other stupid comments that all of them jammed together in his throat as he stared at the man with his fully upgraded Vindicator and its expensive mods against the second-level piece of crap he was holding. That thing would have taken his head off. All he could do in the face of that was flutter his mandibles nervously. "Garrus."

The Commander had gone over to where his trainees were huddled to coax them out with confident words and the big marine was keeping watch. Lantar went back to digging the injured woman out of the rubble, unable to look his ex-Boss in the eye anymore. Helena gasped a sharp intake of pain as he tried to move her and Garrus was there at their side putting medigel on her fractured ribs. "You're C-sec now?"

"Working on it." This was the first time they'd spoken since... since that night in his quarters. Not one of his prouder moments, he still remembered his behavior with painful clarity. It left his mouth dry, he was nervous and uncomfortable but past being crippled by the man's presence. "Trying to do something good."

Garrus didn't reply, just rose to walk back to his squad. Heh, he hadn't expected anything else- he hadn't failed to notice that Garrus had only used his surname when he addressed him. Soft words of encouragement got the trainee to shift to almost sit and he was ripping a sleeve off his uniform to try to bind her waist when a bright blue stain greeted him on the fabric and he remembered he'd been shot. Oh, yeah. He'd deal with it later. When Lantar could finally get her up and was starting back to the rest of them one of the asari rushed over to help support her. "Goddess Helena you're-"

"Hon, calm down, I'm not dead yet." the turian woman tried to laugh as she took her other arm but pain weighed heavy in her subvocals- medigel had stopped the bleeding and numbed some of the pain but she was still fucked up inside and there must have been bones clinking together. They walked back slowly. The Commander was finishing filling his trainees in on what was happening, nothing he hadn't already figured out. Her eyes suddenly snapped to someone in the back of the group, the hairy lines over them wrenching together. "Shit, Kolyat, when did- nevermind, we need to talk about your father, he's been injured and it's bad."

Shepard pulled Krios to the side, speaking in worried tones. Whatever she was saying was enough to crack the teen's composure and he caught things like 'stabbed in the' and 'kill the bitch for what he's done, your father is a good man-' despite trying not to pry.

"Sidonis."

The authority in the Palaveni accent could only be one person and he snapped to attention as best he could.

"I want you to lead this group back to Huerta Memorial. The way we came from should be mostly clear, I've sent maps to your omnitools, just follow it as long as you can and be careful. There's a room marked about five minutes back with two turians and a human that we had to stabilize and leave behind because no one was fit to take point- if they're still alive when you reach them try to bring them back with you."

_Holy shit_. This wasn't just forgiveness, this was_ trust_. Lantar fully handed the wounded woman over to the asari to stand straight again, shouldering his shotgun. "I won't let you down."

Garrus just nodded at him with the full intensity of his gaze and turned off to get back to Shepard as she was laying out their plan of action with the marine. All other eyes were on him. Fuck he should say something. "You heard the man, let's get the fuck out of here."

Off to his side he heard Leta laugh as they ran, trilling at him. "Spirits Sid- first Archangel now Vakarian? Who else do you know, the fucking Primarch?"

He grinned back in reply. "Try not to spread it around."

"No one would believe me anyway."

_I won't let you down Garrus_ Lantar said to himself again, tightening his grip on his gun with a damn determined glint in his eyes. _Never again._


	11. Graduation

After all of that parts of the wards and Presidium looked like they'd been fucked a little too hard by a thresher maw but the Keepers started cleaning things up even before the last fires were put out. The people would be a little harder to put back together.

Kolyat Krios' dad died, one of nearly 200 casualties. None of the trainees or the officers he lead out of HQ were among them thank the Spirits. But the Palaveni officer he'd slept with for a few weeks was. Lantar had come across the body himself during the evac, which had been... disquieting. Out of his own friends Lamont the smiler had been killed at his desk, Hestia had suffered some kind of nervous break and took off to fight for Palaven (according to her if it wasn't even safe here she may as well go straight to the fight at home) and Linaria had ended up in the hospital.

He was coming in to visit her as soon as he heard five days later to find her propped up in bed looking pissed off. Mark was in there with her, their two girls were sleeping at their mother's feet, and she just stared her husband down with steely determination. If the asari could have crossed her arms over her chest she would have, but one was in a cast and the other had some kind of medical thing twined through it that held it at her side. Their voices were kept low for sake of not waking the children but the words were heated.

"You can't seriously be thinking of going back so soon Lin, the doctors said-"

"The doctors can go hang. The new supervisor called and told me how bad things are, they need me back on the force as soon as- Sidonis! Shit kid, you're alive!"

So they'd finally noticed him. He gave her a weak flare of his mandibles and found another chair to sit in, browplates pulled in "Yeah, pretty much. I'm not...interrupting, am I?" and he made a small gesture to the two of them.

"No, we've been arguing about that for two hours now and it hasn't gone anywhere. You had a class in HQ that day didn't you?"

"I did until things started exploding. Managed to get most of the rest of my class out alive, though Helena's still pretty screwed up. What the fuck happened to _you_?"

"Ended up brawling in a back office with a phantom, she ripped me up good before I took her head off. It felt so good to do that again, I haven't had to use my CQC skills like that since I was still in my maiden stage..." Linaria looked off with a dreamy expression, reminiscing over the violence fondly. When she looked back down she grinned dangerously with a gleam in her eyes. "Kicked her corpse a few times for good measure. Even when I thought I was going to bleed to death it just felt so satisfying. Then the door slams open again and there's my old partner and Commander-fucking-_Shepard_ to patch me up and pull me out of the fire." And she barks out a laugh "Commander Shepard, in the flesh! It's not as if I got to talk to her, could barely think straight, but still... hell of a story."

"We ran into them too, it was..." a weak chuckle shuffled from his throat. "It's a long story."

Linaria looked back to her husband, another wordless conversation passing between them. Need to talk privately love, sorry. Not a problem, should I take the girls? Let them sleep, they'll be fine. Mark stepped out and closed the door, and she gave her full attention back to him. "You met-"

"Yeah." His mandibles hiked up his face as he grimaced a little. "...How do you even know?"

"The night you slept on our couch, you were drunk and talking a lot. You didn't quite use names but I'd been on patrol with the guy for seven months and I figured it out." She shifted in her bandages to stretch as best as she could, the skin above her eyes pulling in slightly. "Don't worry, I'll take it to my grave. Not even Mark knows. Are you alright?"

"It's... complicated. But I think we're ok now. As ok as we'll ever be anyway." The smile was weak but it was genuine. "He trusted me to get survivors out and I don't think he hates me anymore, and that's all I can really ask."

"I'm glad, kid." A blue hand touched one of his shoulders, sitting there quiet for a moment. Then she grinned suddenly, flat white teeth showing in her face. "So did you meet Commander Shepard? She's amazing isn't she?"

Lantar figured out quickly that she was trying to make a lighter topic change. It meant he hadn't spilled about who Garrus was with and felt a wave of relief- that was _his_ personal business not something he had a right to talk about. Even as he knew she was asking about earlier in the week part of his mind went back to the woman sitting on the bench in the wards with him, fire in her eyes and steel in her spine. "What I saw of her was pretty amazing, yeah."

* * *

Every few days he'd come and visit her until she was let out a week and a half later to rejoin the force. A lot of cops were getting the rush treatment- C-sec's ranks had been devastated in the assault. People were coaxed out of the hospital, out of retirement, and many of the current trainees (himself included) were pushed onto the fast track for proper officer-hood. There wasn't much of a ceremony when he graduated- he'd missed the first class out and all the posturing and fanfare designed to tell the galaxy C-sec was back in business that went with it. Not that he minded. Lantar preferred the smaller group: quieter, more serious, just cops and their fellows. He took the uniform he was given with pride and wore it with pride every damn day.

On the night of his graduation a number of the trainees that'd been with him the day of the assault invited him out for drinks at the Dark Star: Leta, Geron, Helena fresh out of the hospital and her bondmate, the quiet guy who's name he could never remember, the human officer they'd evaced- pretty much everyone who was still on the Citadel that didn't have work the next day or kids with Fala Pox. It was a hell of a lively group- most of them were on track for their own careers and reveling in just being alive as much as his appointment, and Lantar let himself have one beer for sake of celebrating before cutting himself off.

All of the others (save Helena, still on meds) got trashed in their private booth and Geron started the chorus asking him for Archangel stories. Well hell... he should have guessed this was going to happen after he brought it up, but at least everyone on the station didn't seem to know. Lantar swore them to secrecy, though he was counting on the sheer volume of alcohol in their blood to help it keep. All the same the version he told of the Gus Williams takedown was highly abridged and edited but mainly true. When they asked him which one in the vids he was he answered truthfully (the one in grey) and when they asked him if he knew what happened to the team in the end he lied (he said he didn't know) and they were so far in their cups that they didn't argue with him.

Everyone managed to stumble home into the wee hours of the night cycle, laughing and singing badly. Leta looked like she wanted to invite him back to her apartment afterwards but took his disinterest with grace, smiled and said she'd see him in the office next week then. He walked home with a smile on his face and his hands hooked in his pockets, a talon tapping the new badge he had there- not a bad way to finish the day.

Things were nice and stable after that. Well as stable as it could be with current events what they were- he didn't watch the news, it wasn't like there was shit he could do about it anyway so why make himself crazy over it? He did his job, kept up with his refugee kids in his spare time, spent a night or so a week at the Dark Star with his friends, had the occasional one night stand and stayed sober.

Somewhere in the middle of all of this one of those flings ended up ranking among his worst since leaving Invictus. Lantar's rounds had he and his partner going past the exterior of Purgatory on the way to somewhere else when he felt the tingling sensation of interested eyes on him and glanced back to catch their owner. Handsome enough, light brown plates and brown eyes, older, confident... and barefaced. If he was being honest that kind of thing would have made his skin crawl not that long ago. Barefaces were all traitors who couldn't be trusted was what he'd been taught- Spirits knew he treated even Ripper like shit until the end... But it was hard to keep the same kind of prejudices on perceived traitors when you were one. So when the guy started making subtle pick-up gestures with body language Lantar breathed a sigh of relief that his partner was human and wouldn't notice or understand the silent conversation going on between the two turians. At the end of it the guy flashed him a grin and sauntered back into Purgatory.

Later that evening when he was off his shift Lantar came back to the club in his green civies- he'd never actually been in Purgatory so at first so the place was almost a little... well, overwhelming. It was more like Afterlife than it was any other bar on the station, huge and loud and overwhelming, though nowhere could ever hold the same cloying thick taste of sex death and danger like Afterlife did. It was an unpleasant memory, he was starting to regret coming here... Thankfully he didn't have long to get lost before someone spoke up behind him. "Took you long enough, I was starting to wonder."

"It was a long shift, I needed a shower." He let a green eye shift back over his shoulder to take the guy in. Confidence, he glowed confidence, and he felt a pulse of heat run down to his groin. Damn he loved a guy who knew what he was doing, and this one looked like he'd been doing it since before he was born.

Talons stepped their way up his carapace behind him. "If you're good to go I've got a room in the back."

It started so damn well- fast groping and grinding against a wall, heated gasps and yeah the guy nipped a little _too fucking hard _ but he stopped doing it when he growled at him. _Shit_ he hated biters, he'd been bitten by partners enough as a teenager who lacked the facility to tell the older guys to knock it the fuck off- was hebleeding? There were little pinpricks of blue on his hand when he pulled it back from his neck. Fuck, he _was_ bleeding wasn't he, that was just- oh_ Spirits _thenhe started groping his waist like a professional so Lantar forgot about being angry and just went back to getting hard.

The light brown stranger was touching him as he leaned in by his ear- "Pick a spot" he hissed through a moan. Bed. Bed was good and Lantar said so, and his partner for the evening pulled him towards it. Fuck it had been too long, this was going to be-

... Oh hell. The guy had taken position on the edge of the bed with his ass in the air. This was... not what he'd come in here for. "Wait, I thought I was going to be the one getting-'"

"Next, have some patience." he grunted out, and his ass remained firmly in the air. Eh...he could live with that. It wasn't as if he _couldn't _be the one on top- he'd slept with women a few times in his youth before he found his preference- it just meant that he was slightly clumsy. It was usually so easy to find turian guys who wanted to be the one doing the fucking, he almost never had to top his male partners. The guy seemed to enjoy it well enough anyway and he came before Lantar finished.

That was nice for him, but for Lantar it lead to an unpleasant few minutes where he was still hard and hanging there waiting for the other guy to be able to return the favor. Eventually he found himself shoved into the bed and _shit _now _that was what he was talking about!_ So much better than his last- _fuck _he should have done this again sooner why hadn't he done this soone-

The thrusting froze abruptly half inside him at the sound of an omnitool buzzing angrily, and just as abruptly it pulled back out. Wait, what? He stared back incredulously as the guy sprinted over to his clothes and pulled the device out to _answer the fucking thing_. Lantar couldn't even get a comment out, just stared back at him in slack-mandibled disbelief to a chorus of 'Yes ma'am' and 'No ma'am ' and 'Of course ma'am, right away'. Two minutes later the call ended, and the guy was holding his face and giving him the most embarrassed look he'd ever seen.

"That was my boss, I need to go."

"You're fucking kidding me."

"Sorry." He was seriously reaching for his clothes, he was going to leave him hanging there when he'd already gotten off and his guest was still kneeling on his bed with an erection. What was he, 15 again? Did this guy seriously think he could treat him like this?

"Fuck your boss, get back here and fuck me!"

The guy gave him the most awkward look, clearly mortified but Lantar wasn't feeling terribly forgiving right now. "Nobody fucks with my boss." and he made a fist and thunked himself right at the head of his dick. It left the guy doubled over in pain as he pulled his clothes back on, but he was well and truly recoiled and gone, just like any chance Lantar had of having a good evening. Now fully dressed, he mumbled another apology before ducking out and shutting the door behind him.

Well he was never coming back here again, that was for sure. The only point still standing in his favor was that he hadn't thrown him out of his place before abandoning him, but no way in fuck was he going to sit around and wait for the asshole. There had been a time when Sidonis would have been a vindictive little shit and destroyed something in the room, or stormed out into the club hard-on and all and grabbed the first interested guy he saw to fuck him against the wall of the public bathroom, or stalked off to the bar to drink his sorrows away. But he was an adult now and _damn it _you didn't fucking act like that, he was better than that. So in lieu of any kind of fit he got off his knees and took a cold shower.

On the way out while he finished tugging his tunic back into order was the first time he caught the glint of glass eyes and noticed the stuffed vorcha head hanging on the wall.

...Well, fuck, maybe it wasn't such a bad idea he wasn't going to be in this room any longer after all.

_Yeah... never walking in this place again. I'll stick to the Dark Star. More working stiffs, less freaks._


	12. Homecoming Part 1

The universe has a way of laughing at you- something Lantar knew far too well. So less than a month later he found himself at Purgatory again, looking for someone. However this time was different- he wasn't looking for sex, this wasn't a social call and he was armed and in his armor. Lantar was on duty and he'd been asked to do something and he was damn well going to do it, no matter how unpleasant.

There were five of them- two on the couch, two standing further back and the guard- off on one of the side wings of the middle floor of the club, leaving it strangely empty for how crowded Purgatory had been these days. It seemed that no one, not even the drunkest dancers, wanted to get too close to Aria T'Loak.

Lantar could just start to make out the conversation of the standing two as he headed up.

"Bosh'tet, as if she wouldn't bring you Garrus. Name me _one _mission you haven't been on since Wrex left the ship."

"I can do you one better. Picking up Mordin and hunting down Morinth."

"Oh _please_. The first had a plague that killed turians and Chakwas would have bolted you to your hospital bed if Shepard tried to take you- your damn head was still half blown open. And the second one involved her flirting with a sociopath. You would have put a bullet in her head or tried to charge in and ruined everything."

"Alright, alright, I get it Tali. I'm just saying, whoever this guide Bailey is sending in is can't know Omega as well as I do, there's no reason to bring them instead of you. I saw enough good officers killed by Cerberus six weeks ago and I don't need to see it happen again, it's unnecessary."

Well it was now or never. Lantar stepped forward onto the platform, steeling his shoulders. "You know Omega, but I know it better."

* * *

Shepard glanced up along with her squadmates when someone spoke, Aria couldn't be bothered. The cop was younger than she would have thought- he looked about 25, locked in seriousness and dressed in the light armor variant of the familiar C-Sec blues with a hell of a rifle slung over his back. She thought there was something familiar in the two-toned face with its lavender tattoos but she couldn't put a finger on it... Then she saw Garrus change, the stiff silence with his mandibles pulled in sharply and she remembered where she'd seen this particular turian before.

"Sidonis." There was a careful lack of emotion in Garrus' voice, though Shepard had the feeling his subvocalizations might have offered a deeper window if she could understand them. As much time as she spent with her lover and as well as she knew him, her ears were still human and they had limits.

Lantar Sidonis for his part didn't flinch- it was obvious this was stressful for him by the stiffness of his posture but he wasn't backing down. He was worlds away from the twitching, panicked broken thing she'd met in the Wards as she stood between him and the barrel of a M-98 Widow. The kid met Garrus' eyes straight on. "I know what I did and I'm living with it, doing what I can to make things right, and this is one of them. I lived on that station for eight years and I know my way around far beyond the places we worked together."

She wasn't the one being addressed at the moment so Shepard was silent as she rose from the couch, walking to a few feet behind her teammates. The young turian glanced at her but continued speaking to her lover. "Bailey gave me the basics of what you need and I can do it. If we get Omega we get Aria, we get the full strength of her resources and all of the eezo and deadly illegal shit that's buried in that station."

"You're presuming a lot with the 'we' Sidonis. You're not a part of this."

"With the reapers we're _all _a part of this. This is a lot bigger than the two of us Garrus." _Damn_ she needed to look into implants that could interpret the full turian vocal range when this war was over and she had the time for that kind of thing. There was a lot going on under the surface that she missed like this. "This is about everyone and if I can help I'm doing it."

There was silence for a few moments after that- Garrus broke the gaze first and didn't answer, so Shepard took it as her cue to take point. She thrust out a hand, taking her trademark disarming-this-situation-right-now grin out. "We'll be glad to have your help officer." For a second he just looked at her hand, deep relief in the subtle change in his posture as he took it and shook once.

"You did a damn fine job during the coup attempt I heard, we were right to trust you." Just a bit more accent on the _we_ right there- she wasn't going to take Garrus to task in public, but a gentle reminder wouldn't hurt. They'd have more of a talk later. "The Citadel needs every good man and woman they can get but we need to borrow you for a while." Shepard finished as she stood back, hands on her hips, disarming grin still in place. She'd negotiated peace between people who'd been at war for 300 years for fuck's sake- _surely _she could handle this.

"...Thanks. I'm just glad for the chance." He flicked his mandibles in a weak smile, taking a breath and shaking his head out as he got more comfortable in his own skin. Good, she needed him to be able to focus. "I'm ready when you are, Commander."

"Glad to hear it. Aria doesn't want to discuss further details here so she's dragging us off somewhere she's decided is more trustworthy."

"On your own if she got what she wanted." Tali snorted, presumably pulling a face inside her mask by that tone. "As if _that_ was happening."

Shepard flashed a grin at the other woman, getting in return a shift in the hazy light of her eyes that indicated a laugh. "Not with you two around. But I need you back on the ship Tali, let the crew know what's going on and keep an eye on things for me while we're gone. If something goes wrong and we need you we'll be in touch."

"Keelah Se'lai. Take care of her, Garrus."

Next to her he nodded, still otherwise silent. Tali left the platform and disappeared into the crowd beyond, leaving Shepard with the two turian men and their uncomfortable silence. When she'd asked Bailey for a guide, she hadn't been expecting this... But Garrus would get over himself soon enough, she was certain of it. The kid had proven himself capable and if he knew the place as well as he said, they'd get this shit done and over with and they'd be another step closer to stomping both Cerberus and the Reapers out of existence.

A cold clipped tone spoke up from behind them "If we're done with the introductions I want to get going. I have a throne to retake."

"Ready when you are Aria, I just need to know what we're doing."

Aria's lips quirked up at the edge. "Trust me, you'll know soon."

This was going to be a hell of a ride.

* * *

One slightly cramped car ride later found them on the ship, a captured Cerberus vessel crawling with Aria's people and displaced mercs from all factions ready and roaring for blood. Lantar was on edge- he could tell Garrus was too, they were effectively trapped in a floating crate where every person on board at one time had wanted their heads. _Spirits_ there was a distinct possibility that they still did. The situation left him tense, but at the same time there was relief at the sudden lack of his old Boss' animosity towards him in the face of a shared enemy.

Shepard, however, was perfectly fucking calm and getting down to the business of discussing the details of the plan. Apparently Aria had recently made contact with a group on the ground and she wanted the three of them to run the gang some badly needed supplies and escort their leader back to the operating base she and her lieutenants would be establishing. Further action would be determined from there. Shepard seemed less than impressed with their role.

"So let me get this straight. You're dragging us all the way to the Terminus systems for an escort mission?"

Aria gave her a look of disdain, though to be fair that was more of less her default expression. "An escort mission for a wanted outlaw through the heart of Cerberus-controlled Omega with adjutants crawling through the shadows. I _need_ Kandros Shepard, so bring her back alive." There was something colder than usual in her voice at that, which he hadn't thought was possible. "Trust me, there will be plenty of killing along the way and more when it's done. Your skills aren't being wasted."

Garrus stopped flitting his eyes constantly around the bridge for a moment to settle them on Aria. "There are still Blue Suns on Omega?" He'd been thinking the same thing- turians were members ofa lot of merc organizations, often high ranking at that, but they rarely rose to the top outside the Suns. Lantar had given up hope long ago though, so when the answer came it didn't hurt.

"The only Suns left on Omega are corpses. She heads the Talons, barely an organization worth mentioning but I'll work with what I have." And a moment later when he gave her a puzzled look she added offhandedly over her shoulder "After your time."

Well that answered the question if she knew who he was or not, heh. And she was still letting him on her ship- that spoke either to Shepard's force of will or Aria's desperation or a little of both. Archangel had never gone directly after the Pirate Queen of Omega during their time, but it didn't mean she would have any love for the man- men, Lantar knew she'd know who he was too- who had turned some small sections of her station upside down for a few months. Reflexively he touched an elbow to the Eviscerator he'd pulled off a trooper's corpse during the coup to help settle his nerves. It couldn't save them if everyone on the ship turned on them at once, but it had rapidly become his favorite gun and it was nice to remember it was there, call it a ritual. Garrus looked to be carrying out one of his own by stalking out Shepard's back and staying firmly at her six.

The women continued discussing the plan of attack. There was clearly a game being played here behind the lines, Aria had cards she wasn't showing. The two men exchanged glances but said nothing.

It wasn't friendly but it was companionable, and he was alright with that.

* * *

"You know, when I signed up for this that wasn't in the contract."

Garrus snorted, a ghost of amusement in the sound as he pulled himself out of the wreckage of their escape pod behind him. Shepard was already radioing Aria to try to establish their situation after that unplanned detour. If the matriarch had needed advice on whether or not playing chicken with a space station was a good idea... well she'd gotten her answer.

Behind them Shepard powered down her tool and went immediately into her Commander voice. "Alright, enough of the pods made it through that Aria's taking her men to shut down the defense systems for the fleet as planned, we're picking up the target and bringing her to the bunker. If that goes south we stay the fuck alive and meet her somewhere else. Anyone got a read on where we are?"

"Tuhi district." Lantar flared a mandible out slightly in amusement as his eyes scanned the surroundings for danger. Faint sirens in the distance, but Cerberus hadn't quite found their position yet. "There was a nice salarian diner around her that the Vult people I knew used to go to. She's in the north cargo bay in Sector 4 right?"

"According to Aria."

"Alright, follow me." He took off into a side street and his companions fell into formation behind him- all of this had been discussed ahead of time on the ship, and when they encountered the first resistance the bastards didn't know what hit them. As soon as a fight broke out Shepard took point instantly, Garrus at her six and Lantar doing what he could to help. He knew all of Garrus' hand signals by route and the ones he hadn't recognized from his brief stint in the turian military had apparently come from the Commander so he kept up pretty well as long as you didn't compare it to the prenatural understanding his squadmates seemed to have. Spirits they moved perfectly together, it was almost distracting watching the two of them.

While they made their was through the district they could hear Aria and her lieutenants fighting their own battles over the coms.

_-"They're hitting our flank, we need backup!"-_

_-"Area's clear, move your asses! Our people are dying out there while you're jackassing around!"-_

_-"Loud and clear Aria!"-_

_-"Take that fucker! Hah, did you see that one Grizz?"-_

_-"I'm sure the rest of the Nemesises are pissing themselves, shut up and shoot."-_

_-"Sure it's not Nemesi?"-_

_-"Who cares as long as it's dead?"-_

_-"Phantom on my ass, little help here!"-_

_-"MOTHERFUC-"-_

_-"Well there goes Moklan."-_

_-"Never liked him anyway."-_

_-"Preitor get your fucking head down before I take it off!"-_

_-"Yes Ma'am."-_

That last one sounded vaguely familiar but he didn't stop to think about it as he unloaded a shotgun round into the chest of a Guardian Shepard had staggered with a shockwave. The thing he was looking for was around here somewhere, but where...

Aaha! "Garrus!" Lantar called out over the com as he vaulted through the shattered window of a storefront "Remember the tunnels?"

"There's one around here?"

"Yep, should lead us in a straight-ish line to the right sector if I've got it in my head right. Can you hack the lock?"

"On it. Cover Shepard, she's been frying her shields running over those damn Rampant corpses."

"Will do."

The two men passed each other without a glance- there was work to do after all. At that moment it wasn't that different from back in the day and despite the fight going on around them he smiled.

Lantar knew Garrus was good but the rate at which he tore down the security procedures on the hidden panel was astounding- barely a minute had passed before he was calling them to head down. Lantar slid down the ladder first, followed by Shepard who simply jumped and did some kind of flare thing with her biotics to cushion the fall. Garrus climbed down last, landing easily and taking in their surroundings critically. "These things always looked the same, too easy to get lost."

"Mhmn, and if you ran into Aria you were dead. Figure she won't mind us being down here now though." He shifted to a slightly more at ease stance and glanced over his shoulder back to his old Boss. "We came back this way once when we got caught in a tight spot, decided it was worth the risk. But Spirits, when did you get so much better at tech? I mean you were always good at cali-"

Off to his right Shepard made a choking sound, shaking violently with laughter. The sudden explosion of noise made him jump and snap his weapon up, but he lowered it again when he realized what the noise was. "What, what did I say?"

"... Shepard..." Garrus seemed somewhat exasperated as he glared at her, but the flutter of his mandibles betrayed some embarrassment. Whatever he'd said must have been some inside joke thing. "Let's get moving shall we?"

"Alright big guy." The grin on her face was huge, baring all her square little teeth. Her posture regained full seriousness quickly but there was still a glint in her eyes- Garrus shook his head and muttered something about _Spirits, never going to let me live that down are you?_ and Lantar figured it was better not to ask as they took off on their newly opened path.


	13. Homecoming Part 2

The tunnels were blessedly free of firefights so they made much better time. Over the coms came the news that Aria and her lieutenants had shut off the defenses and reached the bunker with acceptable casualties... Granted that it was coming from Aria so hell knew how many dead that meant. Shepard knew that she had no better option than to try and trust the woman right now. A coldhearted bitch she may be, but the matriarch had been leading conflicts on this station for centuries before she'd been born. If they couldn't trust her judgement on the situation, they shouldn't have agreed to come all the way out to the Terminus.

Up ahead near one of the ladders that went to the exits something moved- she snapped her Vindicator up at the same time two other guns did the same beside her. The noise stopped and she immediately took the lead again, standing straight and barking in her Listen-To-Me voice "This is Commander Shepard of the Alliance Navy, show yourself."

The pause in the air lasted for a few tense seconds before a female voice spoke up with the deepest flanging she'd ever heard on a woman. "How do you know I'm not Cerberus?"

"A Nemesis never travels alone, Phantoms can't go more than thirty seconds without vaulting around and none of the other forces they have can move like that." A quirk up of her lips later she added "And Cerberus isn't recruiting anyone whose boots only have two toes. Aria sent us to pick up the Talon leader, I take it I'm speaking to her?"

"Yes. What about the supplies?" Pale green eyes stared down at her from the darkness, bright and determined. She was already shaping up to be interesting.

"Sorry but they're not coming. They were lost when the ship crashed into the station."

The next word glitched in her translator, indicating it was probably some obscure curse. "So she sends you here with nothing, _Spirits_." and at that the Talon leader leapt down from her perch to join them. The woman looked battered and tired with a worn drape of a cloak disguising the brightness of her armor but she stood tall as she took their squad in. "So where is she quartering this time?"

"A bunker on D-Deck, I figure we get up there and head for the direction with the most screaming."

Kandros shook here head and pulled up her omnitool. "No need, the tunnels lead straight to it and should save us some time.

"We'd appreciate the hell out of it. Mind taking point?"

"May as well." There was something less than pleasant in the way the other woman looked at her. Not her squadmates- she was politely indifferent to them- the look of judgement was only for herself. Whatever it was didn't seem pressing enough for her to bring up.

Another way things could go wrong? The whole coup was still up in the air right now, along with millions of lives even if you ignored the repercussions losing Omega would have on the Reaper War at large. They always ended up in the fun places didn't they. Unable to do much else for the bigger picture right now, they followed the woman in red through the darkness.

* * *

"Nyreen. I believe you were going to explain yourself."

No 'Oh, you're still alive' or even a bitchy Aria version of 'thanks', just a complete lack of acknowledgement of the rest of their existences as cold blue eyes burned into the turian woman's face.

"Later Aria. People are dying, we have a war to attend to first." Nyreen answered, mandibles held tight to her face.

They started getting down to the business of discussing plans in their makeshift command center, though their companions kept up the cold, adversarial line of conversation and there were long stretches where Shepard was fairly sure the rest of them had been forgotten. She didn't expect pleasantries out of Aria and she didn't know Kandros at all save small overheard details but there just seemed to be a special level of vitriol going on between them.

Garrus shot her a look over his shoulder that said _You seeing what I'm seeing?_ After confirming the two women were thoroughly not paying attention to them Shepard made an obscene hand gesture and got a droll mandible flick in return. When he caught it Sidonis nearly choked on a ration bar he'd dug out of a pocket and she had to bite back a laugh as she pounded him on the back.

"For fuck's sake Nyreen, if I was going to just murder everyone on my station indiscriminately I wouldn't have let _Archangel_ come along!"

Ah, they were being acknowledged again. "Your sense of humor is lacking Aria." The female turian's eyes narrowed sharply, a cool distant something in her voice that (god damn it) probably would have had a lot more going on in the subvocals than normal speech. "Archangel's dead."

Beside her Garrus took that as his cue and unfolded himself from a lean to a stand as he cleared his throat, flashing Kandros a confident smile. "Some one must have failed to tell me that."

Shepard's eyes lingered for a moment to take in this gorgeous man that was hers as he held a short conversation with the visibly stunned Kandros. He affirmed who he was, she seemed deeply pleased- she'd looked up to him, and as they talked about what she had been doing for the people of Omega in small part at his inspiration it brought out an air of pride that was immediately visible in her lover. The admiration seemed innocent enough, which was nice. Not that Shepard had about doubt about Garrus' loyalty to her but she'd noticed both of her male companions slack-mandibled stares at the woman when she took her hood off and it was nice to see she wouldn't have to disappoint an ally by asking them to step off a taken guy in the middle of an uncertain situation.

In response to something Shepard had missed while she was musing Aria muttered "I told you. I may _wish_ he was dead, but he's still alive."

Garrus tilted his head back slightly from where he'd been speaking with Kandros and settled his eyes on Aria. "It's not as if we ever went directly after your organization. And even while we were still operating you were taking advantage of every location we uprooted for your own gain." His tone stayed nominally light and conversational but there was something harder there in his eyes.

"Directly. I had my hands in any number of operations you trashed, Williams' shipments for example. The only reason you never went after me is that you wouldn't have dared. I would have preferred you dead."

"It's a shame you need me now."

Alright that was enough. Shepard stepped between the two of them and brought out her Commander voice again. "If we're all done waving our dicks at each other can we get back to work? There's a battle going on out there and as soon as it's over Aria he'll leave your blessed station alone- his vigilante days are over if he ever wants to have sex again. And Garrus- stop prodding her. She didn't kill your men and everyone responsible for that is dead so back off."

Another moment, two of hairy eyeballs later they finally dropped it and everyone got back to business. Most everyone, anyway. No one noticed Sidonis, who stared at the floor looking slightly ill.

* * *

"Everyone responsible is dead."

No one would look at him, no one who knew that wasn't true and suddenly he needed to sit down. Lantar slipped away from the raised central platform in the long room, found an empty corner and hopped the counter to sit on a stack of weapons crates head hung low. _Spirits_ he was suppose to be over this shit- he's repented, the nightmares had gone away, he had a life and a job and friends, he had Garrus' trust again and he'd forgiven him-

It was this place, this fucking station. The way no one would look at him didn't help- it was so much more of a judgement than straight accusations, but Omega itself was an oppressive force of awful memories and too much death that dragged its claws into him like it wanted to rip his guts out. Knowing it was nonsense didn't make it go away, same as knowing that having a drink right now would be moronic didn't stop him from wanting one. His detox hadn't been the worst he'd ever heard of- he knew horror stories from human coworkers who'd gone through it pre-contact- but it'd been bad enough that he knew he couldn't go back there. Especially when he was on duty, Spirits.

No one came into his little space to bother him. It probably wasn't so much a matter of the mercs deciding to be nice as it was his armor made his profession clear and none of them liked cops. That was fine- whatever reasons they had gave him the minute or so he needed for that first painful rush to subside to something he could handle. Yeah, ok, he was ok. Things to do, people to kill after all. So of course when he lifted his head Kandros was standing a few feet away on the other side of the counter watching him curiously.

_Wait for it..._

"Who are you?" she asked in that way that seemed bred into leaders to make you answer them without question.

You know what? Fuck it, he was done. "I'm exactly who the hell you think I am and frankly I'm sick and tired of apologizing for it. If _he _trusts me it should be damnwell good enough for the rest of the fucking galaxy."

"I meant your name." she added a bit flatly.

Oh. "Lantar Sidonis."

"Nyreen Kandros. I had questions, if you'll answer them." Her voice was even but the undertones made it clear that if he told her he wanted to be left alone she'd go. Lantar flicked out a mandible in good humor and gestured to a crate nearby. She vaulted the counter and chose to stand by the weapons bench instead, keeping the respectable distance. "Why is Archangel following the Butcher of Torfan?"

When he laughed she quirked her head at him, oblivious to what made it funny. "Nah, it's just- we were all wondering why you kept giving her such dirty looks. Look, miss- completely disregarding the whole thing where the Commander is the only person who saw this war coming and started doing something about it, love makes people do stupid, crazy things. Why are _you _following Aria T'Loak?"

"I'm not following her, we're acting in concert."

_Uuuuhuh, sure lady._ As if the defensive flick of her features could mean anything else. He'd let it sit, there were other things he was much more curious about.

"Where the fuck are your tats from? I'm a colony kid- not knowing where someone's markings are from can get us killed- and I _still _don't recognize a single stroke in them. Your accent is Hierarchy as they come but those" and he gestured at the bold red lines on her face "are a mystery to me."

"That's because they're not on the list. I made them myself." A pale talon traced one of the lines branching off her green eyes as they stared off into the distance. "My colony markings had barely dried on my face when the Cabals took them away. They said it was my duty, my privilege, my burden. What they failed to mention is that their idea of what to do with biotics was to shut us away and keep us from using our gifts to help anyone because there weren't enough casualties yet. So I left. A few years later I grew tired of the stigma and made my own markings." Kandros glanced back at him, a quirk to her browplates. "And I know you want to ask about the fringe by the way you were avoiding looking at it. It was damaged in a training exercise and rather than have one that was torn to shreds I told them to just take the whole damn thing off."

Lantar nodded in silence. While asking about the fringe would be impolite the question of 'why not just use your original markings' was both obvious to answer and offensive to ask- it was shame enough to be a biotic and to be a deserter separately, but to be both was unforgivable. If she'd had any respect for her family she would never have done it.

But something else... sat in his mind, and he said it without wanting to. "... I knew a turian biotic once, years ago. He's dead now. We were never exactly friends but we worked together."

"The one in black."

"Yeah." The man's face flashed through his memory, tending to his armor with a thousand yard stare. He'd never found out how he died. How any of them had died. Garrus was the only person he could ask, and that line wasn't one he could cross

"And you were?"

"Grey. I was the one in grey."

There was a pause as she must have been searching for the right wording before just saying it straight out, "Why did you do it?" Her tone was quiet and without accusation.

He looked up to her from the floor, laughing weakly. "Like I said, love makes people do stupid things."

* * *

"I should apologize, shouldn't I."

"He's fine, he'd rather just forget about it."

"I didn't mean it like he took it-"

"And he'd rather drop it that talk about it. I spent two years with the man Shepard, I understand how he works."

Shepard didn't make the obvious comment seeing as it was counterproductive to everything they were trying to do to work together. They'd ironed out the bumps and the trio made a decent squad now, no reason to bring up old grudges and damage it. Instead she changed topics, flashing her partner a small grin. "Think we should tell him he's not her type?"

Garrus chuckled in response. "She's about as much his type as he is hers."

"Wait, he's gay?"

"Very."

That took her slightly aback and she turned all the way around to give him a look. "... So if _he_ doesn't want to fuck her, and _you _don't want to fuck her, why were you both staring at her with your jaws on the floor?"

Both of his browplates shot up and he couldn't help but laugh. "She's impossible not to notice- she has Valluvian horns for the Spirits' sake."

Clearly that meant something to him but she was in the dark on the reference. "Gonna have to fill me in on that big guy."

He shifted slightly, looking down at her with an odd amusement on his face. "... There are times when I forget you're not turian, despite how much you can act like one at times." To illustrate he raised a hand to the hind point of a mandible and traced his talons back. "A set of fringe extending back and curling in towards the head. They're a rare feature, considered _extremely_ attractive for a turian."

Back in the corner of the room Nyreen turned her head where she was sitting talking to Sidonis and something from years ago flashed in Shepard's head as she looked at the extended mandibles- another face, paler, staring at her with dead wracked cybernetic blue eyes as he thanked her and raised the gun and Shepard shuddered despite herself. Garrus picked up on it immediately of course, he knew her too damn well.

"Like Saren." she said at last, expression carefully guarded.

"Yes."

It was silent for a few beats after that as a three-fingered hand settled on her shoulder in support. Garrus pitched his voice low so only she could hear him when he spoke again. "Still the same nightmares?"

"Wrex warned me not to read his files, said I'd be happier now knowing. And as usual he was right." They talked, at times, in the dreams. She almost never remembered any of it. Mostly she remembered how tired he looked. "We're not that different."

"_You're_ not indoctrinated. Spirits Shepard, don't you think I'd be able to tell?"

"Nihlus couldn't."

They'd had this conversation about a hundred times before. He'd assure her she different than him and still herself, she'd ask how the hell he could tell, they'd argue back and forth on it and occasionally he'd toss in a one-liner about if she ever shot _him_ in the back of the head well then they'd talk. The normal flow of the conversation however was interrupted by Nyreen storming past them and vaulting a set of consoles to access the weapons locker.

"Yes, Nyreen?" Aria had one eye quirked, expression dispassionate. "Going somewhere?"

"Word came through that Cerberus is attacking Talon HQ. Stay here if you like but I'm leaving."

"You're suppose to be rallying them, not chasing after every last wayward group."

Kandros whipped her head around as she pulled a phaestron out of the crate, a snarl in her voice "If you want me to have forces to rally I need to go to them now or there won't be any left."

If the snap had any affect on the Pirate Queen it was impossible to tell- Goddamn something _ugly_ had gone on between these two. "Take Shepard, she's not doing anything."

That was her cue to head to the locker herself and start filling the pockets of her armor with extra sinks. Nyreen eyed her unpleasantly, then shot a look at Aria. "One person."

A blue and black armored arm reached between the two women at the case, followed by a wry young voice standing behind them. "Three people, and trust me when I say we know what the fuck we're doing." Sidonis had spoken up for the first time in a while, twisting a better scope onto his rifle. "I mean these two definitely do but I've got to be good for something if I've managed to stay alive this long."

Garrus came over last- Shepard tossed him a few sinks and he sequestered them away. He didn't need anything else for his weapons but his presence helped their companion bite down the last of her bile. "Fine."

Sidonis flared his mandibles in a dangerous grin as he flipped the rifle onto his back and pulled out his Eviscerator. "If the rest of you are ready I am. I've got a score to settle with these fuckers and it starts with a lot of white and gold corpses."

* * *

"Just so we're clear, everyone knows this is a trap and they're ok with it?"

Shepard didn't take her eyes off the suspiciously empty circle of catwalk as she spoke. "No other option. We need to shut down those fields and this is the only way to do it." A glance confirmed that Garrus and Nyreen had much the same expressions. Well, hell. He'd really started to like living.

"Well if I die here I want a nice funeral. None of that chuck-you-in-the-keeper-tunnels crap. And if there's something on the other side I'm telling it that this was your idea."

The Commander's lips rose slightly but her expression remained resolute as she strode into the ring of glowing consoles. Garrus followed immediately behind her, followed by Nyreen. Lantar shook his head, ran a hand down his fringe and brought up the rear with a shrug. The events that followed surprised exactly no one, though the bit where Kandros and Shepard ripped a hole in the damn forcefield was different. It made for an unpleasant few minutes with the three turians in a box full of mecs left to fend for themselves but it was still better than earlier when he'd had bloated alien horrors dropping on his head in the mines a few hours before. After that little number finished the group fell back down to three as Nyreen took off to lead the Talon offensive opposite Aria and her lieutenants and the rest of her army

Aria and Nyreen were arguing with each other over the coms, either not realizing the audio was patched through to the three of them or not caring. It'd been about different things all day but the topic now seemed to be the riots breaking out in every corner of the station as the barriers came down to let the people of Omega tear into their oppressors as a unified force.

_-"Forget them, there's more important things at stake here!"-_

_-"I will not simply surrender them to the sword Aria, and neither will the Talons. We're going to protect the civilians."-_

_-"Your civilians are bruising for a fight- look around you! This is their home and they want to be a part of this whether you grant them your permission or not!"-_

It went on like that the whole damn time they were disarming the bombs trying to cut Afterlife's district off from the rest of the station. Seemed like General what's-his-name was getting desperate to avoid the reckoning that was to come. When they killed the last bomb the three of them began twisting through Doru to Gozu join in the assault. Lantar had begin to blot out the chatter between the two women but something that came next stuck out.

_-"Damn it Aria, if you're not going to defend my people I will."-_

There was a cold tone of finality in every layer of her voice- both he and Garrus stilled and looked up through the buildings for a few beats despite the fact that they were still too far deep in Gozu to see the fight outside Afterlife.

_-"Just do what you came here to do, end this war. If you remember anything that I've told you..."-_

_-"Nyreen-"_ _- _Aria was breathless, clearly running at full tilt.

_-"... If you remember any of it try to use it."-Damn it I was so close to loving you-_ were the words under the words, thick in her subvocals. There were other sounds in the background, the hum of biotic fields and the rumbling howls of the monsters they had met in the mines, pressing in louder than they should be.

An explosion rocked the district ahead of them and one of the coms went dead as the other was choked with backwash from being too close. Despite the static Aria's voice was painfully clear.

-"_**NYREEN**_!"-

None of them spoke, they just ran like their lives depended on it. Lantar knew what love did to you- it made you stupid, careless, blind to the knife right in front of your nose. And if Aria fell now... There was a reason it was dangerous to topple a queen. Tens of thousands could die in the chaos to take her place, and while they might not like the woman they couldn't let it happen.

He knew the path to take, and he ran.

* * *

Running made quick work of the intervening paths, which was fortunate. Blind with grief and rage Aria had thrown herself right into a trap in the center of Afterlife with Cerberus and those twisted blue hulks swarming the dance floors. The club looked like a nightmare dyed in blue.

Amidst the din and the chaos was the sound of a turian voice calling out to them from one of the lower corners- some of Aria's lieutenants must have made it here with her. A strangely familiar light brown male was camped behind one of the bars for cover, shooting at humans and monsters alike with a Viper and a Raider as distance allowed. Shepard gave a quick signal and the three of them took formation and retreated to his position.

They vaulted behind the shot up hulk of the bar, he and Garrus keeping up covering fire while Shepard crouched to speak to a pale batarian lying badly wounded on the floor but still clutching his pistol determinedly. Oooh yes, and he recognized the turian. Lantar's inconsiderate Purgatory lover of a few weeks past was in bad shape with a shattered leg but too hopped up on stims to care. Another batarian was worse off, dead on the floor with a bullet or ten in his head. The conversation didn't take long and when Shepard spoke to them again he was impressed by the bellow she had on her- she came in loud and clear even over the blast of his Eviscerator.

"Alright men we need to hit the generators for that field- Garrus you hack the consoles, Sidonis and I will cover you. Gavorn, Anto- shoot what you can and try to stay alive because Aria is going to need you when this is over. GO!"

She vaulted the bar in a move so smooth it was like she was born in a hardsuit, flaring her biotics and charging straight into an adjutant that dropped dead almost immediately in the wild explosion of blue she let loose. He and Garrus took off after her at a run. It was chaos all around them- they simply burst through enemies as much as they shot them, Garrus making quick work of each console while they guarded him, shot out the generators for the fields holding Aria and ran off to the next one. Adrenaline was roaring in his eardrums, mixing with the screams of monsters, gunfire and the mad roar of the deamon of a woman bound in the central pillar where strippers had once danced around glittering holoscreens of electric sex. It stank of blood and eezo and sweat and Lantar hasn't felt this alive in ages.

Time passed by in a blur- Aria was free and in a blizzard of blue that rocked everything not bolted to the floor she exploded through the wall of her former office. The general screamed. Aria hit him hard.

Shepard didn't look up until the last trooper was dead, shouldering her Vindicator and walking in silence towards the upper floor. Garrus fell into step directly behind her, Lantar a few paces back. In the room Aria had Petrovsky pinned to his desk while she slowly choked the life out of him. She was hissing things to him that just barely reached his ears but Lantar's eyes still shot about four times wider when his translator recognized the use of the turian word for 'partner'- that wasn't the kind of thing you tossed around lightly, Spirits. His memory flashed back to the charred corpse only identifiable by the missing fringe and chips of red enamel. _I was so close to loving you._ Fuck it was enough to make you sympathetic for the psychopath.

"Aria."

Even through the fog of rage Shepard's single word cut like a knife- the matriarch stilled over her prey, vicious blue eyes turning to the Commander.

"I need him to call off his troops." There was a coldness in her tone that made Lantar shudder. Aria activated the com under his head and shoved him towards it.

"You heard the woman, _speak._"

To the General's credit the terror in his face barely carried into his voice as he ordered all Cerberus troops to cease fighting and surrender immediately. As soon as he was done she turned it off, hovering over the man like a shatha with blood in its teeth. Bitterness hung in her words as she spoke back up, staring down the Commander and the man she knew as Archangel. "So do I get some moralistic screed from you two or can I kill the bastard?"

Shepard said nothing, looking at Aria and then Petrovsky, who tried to sit up before he was slammed back down against the desk.

"Commander I surrender myself into the custody of the Alliance. I can give you intelligence on The Illusive Man, I can help you win this war!"

After another few long thoughtful moments Shepard glanced to his former Boss. "Did you hear anything?"

"Not a word." Garrus was as cold as he'd ever heard him.

"Sounds like he's all yours Aria."

Petrovsky's face froze in terror- he started to protest that she was breaking procedure and wasting valuable resources until a set of indigo hands tightened around his throat again and he stopped talking. Shepard turned and walked back down the stairs to the main floor, Garrus following behind her. Lantar for his part decided to check on the Lieutenants in the bar, anything to be somewhere else. He was all too aware that he'd been in not that different of a situation not so long ago. Thankfully she'd been more worried about Garrus' well being than she was Aria's. Lucky that Garrus had more mercy. He shuddered slightly, shaking it off.

Anto was in a foul mood and Gavorn had seemingly run out of stims seeing as he was shaking and keening sitting on the bar top clutching his broken leg, but the two of them would live. Lantar dug into one of the pockets of his armor, tossing his last medigel packet to the other turian.

Gavorn was surprised enough that he stared at the packet for a few seconds before shooting him a grin and ripping it open to apply it to the places the bone had been shattered. The guy let out a low moan of relief. He might still end up losing the leg but at least it would stopped hurting. "Sweet fucking _Spirits _that feels so good..."

Despite himself and the continued gurgling noise of a human being choked to death on the other end of the club Lantar managed a wry chuckle. "I really wish this was the first time I've heard you say that."

To his credit Gavorn looked properly cowed, light brown mandibles pulled up and in sharply. "You have no idea how much I'd been hoping you were some other cop when you showed up... But, thanks."

"Well I know not to expect anything in return this time, so you're welcomed."

The batarian leaning against the liquor cabinet at the back of the bar stared at them incredulously before turning his full attention on his colleague. "Damn it Preitor, what did I tell you about fucking everything with a dick that so much as looks at you twice! I told you it would bite you in the ass!"

"And not the way I was asking for, yeah I know." Gavorn seemed to be in a much better mood now that he wasn't in pain, laughing jovially. "You're just jealous because batarian women aren't attracted to pale squishy babyfaces."

Anto's return look could have curdled milk. He snorted, digging out a bottle of high-class batarian ale for a painkiller. "Fuck you Preitor."

"I'm glad you're not dead too. Toss me a beer?"

"Turian or quarian?"

"Doesn't matter, most expensive thing you can see that won't kill me." Gavorn held a hand out and caught the bottle tossed into it, eyeing the script and snorting. "Spirits why does Epyrus always get the best shit? Hey C-sec, you want one?"

Lantar had been staring out into space at the place he'd spent weeks of his life during the Vult years so it took him a few seconds to realize he was being spoken to. "No thanks, I'm on duty."

Both of the two of them laughed. "I knew there was a reason I came to Omega!" Anto cheered, reaching up to clink bottles with his fellow lieutenant.

"To this miserable old station!"

"May we never leave again."

"I hear you friend. If only two of us made it out, I'm glad it was you."

The batarian grinned "So now who's soft?"

"Shut up and drink you wrinkly old bastard."


	14. Stuck Here Again

A/N- Pardon the delay folks, been busy. We're almost there...

* * *

The Normandy picked the three of them up some time later and dropped Lantar off at the Citadel. It was an amicable parting, better than he could have ever dreamed of not so long ago. Shepard shook his hand and thanked him and while Garrus still wouldn't use his given name he called him _Officer _and gave him a small salute. It was everything he should have ever wanted but the weight of the bag on his shoulder was dragging his heart into his feet so it took effort to smile.

He stayed at the docks long enough to watch the Normandy leave, admiring the beautiful ship as she took off into the open sky until she was just a dot against the Serpent nebulae. Then he stayed there a while longer, watching the people come and go in tangles and groups before getting up, carefully shifting the battered old duffel under his arm and slipping into the foot traffic himself. With how busy the Citadel was these days he didn't pass a single person he knew in the crowds. It was only at his last stop that someone greeted him by name.

"Lantar? What is it kid?"

Sidonis gave Linaria a flick of a mandible that wasn't quite a smile. "Hey. I guess it was secret but it's over now so it doesn't matter. I just got back from Omega and I need a favor."

The lines of her face creased heavily at that, concern in her tone as she leaned out of the door. "The news was saying something about... Are you alright?"

"Maybe. Sort of. I'll get over it soon enough anyway but not right now. I already stopped by the office and let them know I was back but I wouldn't be in tomorrow or longer because I really, really need to get drunk. I mean I didn't tell them the drunk part but-"

"Woah woah, stop right there!" Both her hands shot out to grab his shoulders and give him a hard shake, eyes narrowing on him sharply as she pursed her lips. "You are _not _getting drunk Lantar. You're an alcoholic by the goddess- come in kid, you can stay here and we'll wait until this goes away..."

"I found his apartment Lin."

She stopped trying to drag him in through the door at the way his voice shook. The young turian's shoulders were painfully stiff under her hands.

"Look I already bought the crap and I'm doing it one way or the other. But I'd rather do it with a friend to keep an eye on me. Just... keep me company, stop me when I'm past numbing and only making myself sick. I... I can't do this sober."

"..." Linaria looked at a loss, turning from his face to the bag of cheap colony beer in one hand to the old Palaveni military issue duffel bag clutched protectively under the crook of his other arm. She wanted to say something, he could tell as the worried silence lasted long over a minute before she sighed. "... Alright Lantar. Alright. Just let me tell Mark I'll be gone."

"Thank you" He let out a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding, running a hand down his face and more grateful than he could say. A minute or so of standing in the doorway staring at nothing later she came back and they set off. Lin didn't say anything during the walk back to his apartment and simply stuck to keeping close by his side, offering support through her presence.

The door to his place clicked open as he keyed in the code and stepped back to let his friend in first. "I've got hangover meds already, I couldn't remember if the ones you bought me last time were still good. They sell them at the liquor store now." His laugh was rough, half distant. "It's kind of fucked up." For a moment after that he stood there in the middle of the room unsure where to go before settling on the edge of the bed. Beer first. It tasted just as bad as it had when he was a teenager but it should do the trick- he went through two before he could get his hands to open the seal of the bag.

All of the expensive things: his armor, weapons, the brandy, the Vallumian cigarettes in their silver case had been gone by the time he found the apartment. Looters had broken in everywhere they could across Omega and took things like that months ago but they didn't bother with the little things. Lantar had picked up some datapads, a set of holoframes, a small leather pouch that's contents clinked in his hands, the bag itself from Cass' service days on Palaven. His throat constricted as he talked.

"You know, when I opened the door I expected him to be there. Not as a... he would have died somewhere else, fighting, not at home. But just... there, like nothing had ever changed." The first datapad was some old Unification War novel, nothing special. He turned the screen back off and put it down on the bed next to him with care. Two more novels were added to the pile after it, then he picked up a datapad full of letters that had him reaching for another beer before Linaria stopped him.

"You have to slow down or you'll be on the floor" she'd said with a hand on his arm. It helped him resist downing a third in less than ten minutes, Spirits bless her. Skimming over the thing gave him the basics- it looked like messages offloaded from an omnitool for safe keeping, old ones given that they were from Janus and his sister. Looked like her name was Ophelia. There was some old human story Montague had loved with an Ophelia in it, she had ended badly too if he remembered it right. It wasn't comfortable reading so he put it down with the others and reached for something else. A holoframe this time.

The temperature in the room dropped ten degrees when he triggered the display. It was Janus, just Janus, standing somewhere looking at the camera without a smile and he recognized the outfit because it was hanging in his closet right now.

"Sweet fucking _Spirits_!" he choked, staring at it for a few more seconds before unclenching a hand from the frame to grab a bottle of the harder stuff. "I'm not drunk enough for this, _fuck..._"

Linaria looked at him worriedly and he handed the photo over to her wordlessly before prying the bottle open with his teeth. Her hand gripping his arm again was the only reason he downed half of it instead of the whole thing. She looked at it and them up again, confusion crinkling her face in a way that pulled on her white markings like wrinkles "Who is it? I thought your guy was from Palaven."

"Parthia, yeah. That's his husband." Lantar only stumbled slightly when he stood and walked to the closet, staring inside and taking another slug. It burned going down and fogged his throbbing head like he needed it to. "Judging by where he came up to on Cassius he was about two inches shorter than me, explains why the damn thing never quite fit." and he tossed the outfit Cassius had given him that last day in the Suns base on the bed.

The frame was tilted down in Lin's hands at an angle where he could still see it, Spirits help him. Everything about the thing that had looked awkward on him looked elegant on Janus. It'd clearly been made for his coloring- _Darkest plates I've ever seen on a turian, red tats, gold eyes._ He could hear that deep beautiful voice murmuring the words against his throat all this time later, fuck it all.

_Why _was easy enough to understand if you took it on the most basic level- it had probably been the only thing the other man owned that would have fit him- but if you thought any deeper into what it meant... "Fuck." Lantar groaned into his hands again, the mouth of the bottle knocking into his face as he did so but he didn't care. "You sure know how to fuck me don't you Cass? Even when you're not here anymore."

"Lantar-"

"Just, _fuck _I don't... Lin I don't even know anymore alright? I thought the fucking engagement stones would be the worst thing I brought back but this is..."

"Lantar, you need to explain this to me if I'm going to help at all because right now I don't understand what's going on." That was a cop voice she used on him, it cut through the fog and got him to turn around again.

A breath, two, he was stable. He was as stable as he was going to get right now. "... Janus had been dead for fifteen years by that point. He can't have had much left of him given what'd happened, but he gave me that. He came back for me and gave me that and let me go. I didn't..." The bed sunk under him as he sat down again, the now empty bottle hanging from his talons between his knees. "He didn't have to do any of that. I should have realized it after the fucking forehead touch." and he mimed it unconsciously with the hand holding his face, the soft pad of a thumb over the broad plate. His throat stung as his voice started to keen.

"I don't know how much you know about turian gestures but it's... important for us. I mean it wasn't the full face-to-face thing but it's not something you do casually. I guess the best way to describe it... like a kiss, that lingers longer than it should. He cared about me too." Lantar hadn't been this badly shaken since Cass had turned him in. Spirits, Cassius... "You should have come _with_ me, _**damn it**_."

Alone he might have hurled the bottle into the wall and let the keen quavering in his chest overwhelm him and break him down but he had a counterbalance with him- the woman who had practically been his mother for the last year moved over quickly and embraced him while he shook.

It helped more than he could say. He'd be ok later, just... not right now. Right now he had too many things to lay to rest.

* * *

Two days of detox aided by meds Lin called in from a clinic contact later had Sidonis on his feet and working again. The situation at the docks was exploding, even with Aria's people leaving in droves to return home to Omega or to fight on the front lines, so he found himself working the refugee camps again. It didn't bother him- he was glad to be able to check up on his kids again. Most were still hanging on, some had died, one or two had found distant relatives to hold to. He did what he could for them.

It wasn't a burden he bore alone. Everyone working down there seemed to be finding small personal missions to keep themselves sane: the asari who always made a point to visit the widow whose wife had died on a mission somewhere halfway across the galaxy to keep an eye on her, the human who always kept a few extra ration bars on him for the kids who needed but didn't want to ask for help to 'steal' from his pockets when he pretended to be occupied elsewhere, the turian who let a young human refugee sleep behind his desk while he stood guard to keep the monsters at bay. With everything they couldn't change... the little things meant a lot and kept them going.

Life was hectic but everyone who was still sane this deep into the war was used to that. They all got a little less sleep, ate worse, held the people they cared about a little tighter as world after world burned. Vices were at an all-time high- the clubs, bars, and brothels filled to bursting day and night. Bars Lantar avoided, he couldn't let himself slip like that again and he was working too much overtime anyway to sit around off-shift with his friends anyway. And he'd never been a dancing person so his vice of choice remained sex, which wasn't hard to come by in a profession full of turian men who were dripping stress from their fringe to their feet. He was actually in bed with a fellow officer taking some blessed time to unwind after a grueling day of work when every damn thing with a screen in the apartment lit up at once.

Both their omnitools, the holoscreen, the list on the fridge, the temperature control in the wall, the flash-heater, the display for the door, all the datapads laid out around the table- every last one turned on simultaneously and scared the living daylights out of both of them. His date for the evening, another Invictus native who'd been with C-sec for 30 years, pulled himself together quickly and rolled off Lantar to pick up his omni and tap at the holokeys to no effect. Lantar himself took another few moments to be frazzled and found that every channel was the same thing, a grey synthetic face looking forward with a strange amount of concentration for a machine.

"We are through Commander." it said in a clipped humanoid female voice. "I have granted us access to every possible source that will not interrupt life support or emergency systems."

"Maintaining signal, ready when you are." That one was from somewhere offscreen, quarian and vaguely familiar but why...

Which was when the synthetic stepped aside and the face of Commander Shepard appeared on every screen in the apartment. Hid bedmate's jaw dropped, but knowing what he did of her Lantar found himself strangely unsurprised. Something this crazy happens it only made sense she had something to do with it.

"This is Commander Shepard of the Alliance Navy. People of the Citadel, I need you to listen to me! The Normandy has just left Thessia and in the Temple of Athame we discovered a prothean beacon that contained critical data for ending this war. We were able to secure it but Cerberus' lap dog forwarded a copy of it to his master before we put the bastard down. We're dealing with them now but the information we've been able to decode so far is too dire to wait. The Reapers are coming for the Citadel _now_. You need to evacuate."

Nothing in her face was exaggerating, her gaze was deadly serious. The two cops looked at each other and began suiting up immediately. Shepard's words continued in the background as they tossed parts of each others' armor across the bed from wherever they'd taken it off in their haste to fuck barely ten minutes ago. Thank the Spirits they'd come here right after their shifts- they still had all of their gear with them. "I've already contacted the Councilors. The salarians are going to take all the refugees they can manage and they'll find somewhere to put the rest of you. My people will remain in contact with the authorities to do whatever we can to help coordinate. I need every C-sec officer and soldier present on the Citadel now to do every damn thing you can to keep the peace. I know I'm fucking up your day revealing this so suddenly but there's no way to do this in a calm and orderly fashion- I owe every one of you a drink when the war's over. Spirits be with you, Godspeed, Goddess watch over you, Keelah Se'lai." The Commander saluted them and the feeds all cut out at once.

Thankfully he'd kept a full weapons locker since the Cerberus attack- there were plenty of sinks stored up and the two of them stocked as many as they could in the pockets of their armor. Lantar grabbed some ration bars from the cabinet as well, Spirits knew when they'd have time to sit and eat again. And after a few moments of staring at his apartment knowing he might never come back here again, he dug under the bed for Cassius' military bag and pulled it onto his back. Everything else could be replaced.

There wasn't time to be scared. That was alright for other people but he was an _officer_ damn it. He brushed a gloved finger over the C-sec symbol emblazoned on his armor and felt a small spike of pride through everything else.

The other cop flashed him a grin. "Ready to go and fight for your life?

Sidonis hefted the Eviscerator he'd pulled off a Cerberus corpse during the attempted Coup onto his shoulder, flaring his mandibles in return. "I'll fight without pause?"

"And when my time comes..."

"-I'll die for the cause" Both of them finished the line in unison. The ridiculousness of a couple of colony kids from the ass end of nowhere quoting the turian national anthem at each other in the face of something its writers couldn't have imagined in their worst nightmares made Lantar laugh and dig an armored elbow into the other man's side. They exited cautiously into the hallway where there were already signs of chaos beginning.

It was gonna be a long night...


	15. The first day of the rest of our lives

That it could have been worse was the best thing he could say for the next hundred hours. It was chaos but there were less riots than he would have expected, just over a hundred people trampled to death and he only had to kill three civilians who were either indoctrinated or just lost their shit and went too far out of line.

The last of those was a drunk who got a human C-Sec officer killed by shoving her into the path of an oncoming shuttle. She'd only been trying to keep him contained and ended up dying horribly, and when the driver veered to try to avoid her... Other officers and bystanders were running around frantically to put the fire out, dragging survivors out of the burning hulk of the shuttle that'd slammed hard into the wall. A few came out alive and badly burned. Mostly it was bodies, and the bastard responsible just stood there staring at it unmoved. Lantar stormed up and grabbed the other turian hard by his arms to force him down. "What the fuck is wrong with you?"

"Pyjak bitch shouldn't have pushed me!" the pale stranger shouted back. His breath stunk of the worst kinds of cheap liquor and his subvocals had taken a turn for the manic. "What does it matter? _ We're all going to die anyway!_"

The walleyed turian was still ranting when Lantar put his pistol to the back of his head and executed him. A quick death was more mercy than he would have otherwise liked but there was no damn time for anything else. It was rough, it was ugly, and there wasn't time to worry about it. He was a cop and he had a job to do.

Even in the midst of so much fear and chaos there were small things that showed the innate goodness in people, helped them all keep moving. In the end Sidonis couldn't remember much of it. Two or three hours to collapse during lulls in the madness didn't leave his brain in stellar condition, and the effort all across the station had been so massive he had only seen small parts of it:

Armax Arsenals delivering crates of stims to every C-Sec office on the station within an hour of Shepard's warning free of charge- Spirits bless them they probably couldn't have made it without them. General Oraka single-handedly stopping a riot by bellowing at the participants to have some damn sense and act like soldiers instead of scared dogs. A hanar priest bringing his unit water in the few minutes they had to breathe and saying a prayer for them despite coming from a faith none of them followed, before disappearing without waiting to be thanked. Linaria Ridgefield leading a group of frightened diners from the restaurant her family had been at, armed with nothing but her Paladin and an evening dress. One of his colleagues refusing to take any of the food he had stuffed in the pockets of his armor unless Lantar had some too because he knew he hadn't been giving himself any time to eat. Etarn Tiron and his seven-foot valkyrie of an asari wife escorting their store's entire inventory of heat sinks and weaponry to every C-sec base of operations they could find on their way to the evac centers, just doing whatever they could to help the cause. Even at the last minute they were breaking up a fight on their evac shuttle as it took off.

And the cops weren't on their own. Mercs and soldiers and retired officers came out of the woodwork to lend their hands and their illegal guns to keep the chaos at bay. They keep the ships evacuating as many people as possible, running as fast as they could between the Serpent Nebulae and Salarian space. Whatever kind of coordination the Normandy's techs were providing from halfway across the galaxy was helping. The calculations of the timing didn't seem possible but everything moved like a well oiled machine.

... The ships at least, the people themselves were still a mess. But it helped.

C-sec was suppose to keep all hands on deck with as many personnel as possible remaining on the station as long as possible while civilians still remained, while the clock whose end date no one knew ticked down on their lives. The majority of them kept to that but there were desertions, and exceptions- Lantar wasn't the only one to tun a blind eye to the occasional officer leaving with their family.

Allium left with Helena, who had never fully recovered from her injuries from that Atlas during the Cerberus coup. They'd still been saving for the cybernetics that could give her a normal life again when all of this happened and she couldn't bear to leave her injured bondmate alone. The docks cop who'd been protecting a human child left with her shuttle after she begged him, weeping into his chest that she couldn't lose another family. The Invicitan officer he'd been with when all of this started took off with a group of his little cousins he'd been taking care of on the Citadel while their parents were fighting and dying for the Hierarchy. Linaria...

Mark and the girls were on the shuttle and Lin refused to go. Her husband's hands were shaking where they clutched onto their daughters. The little ones were sobbing, their dad was trying his damndest not to, and their mom was unyielding.

"Lin, please..."

"I'm not a civilian Mark, I can't just leave because I want to. There are still people-"

Human faces were painfully malleable, the quaking in his features was all too clear even from the other end of the dock. "They're never going to get everyone off love, we're running out of time!"

"Which is why you need to stop holding up the shuttle and get out of here."

"Linaria-"

She grabbed him by the collar and yanked him forward to kiss him hard, murmuring something too quiet to be heard before pushing them in and slamming the outer door shut. Lantar couldn't see in past the small windows but he could see his friend just fine, still in that dress with its stupid heels and what used to be her makeup, a flack jacket tossed over the ensemble as an afterthought. When he finally reached her he set a hand on her arm but as he opened his mouth to speak she shook her head. She didn't want to hear it right now. Spirits, she probably couldn't- there was a wetness running down her stern face that she couldn't even speak through. They backed off the busiest area of the dock and stood like that for nearly a minute as more shuttles went through and dispersed into the only safety that still remained in the galaxy. How long would it be safe? No one knew. But they had to try.

They went back into gear after that, too fucking much to do to feel much of anything. Shuttle after shuttle, warships that had been refueling, private vessels that had been commandeered by authority of the Council, even a cruise ship that the worst of the denialists had been holed up on acting like everything was normal. At the docks they took them all and filled them up to capacity and sent them away.

With every passing hour more and more cops lost their nerve and disappeared. Fuck there was a part of Lantar that was still a coward at heart and wanted to say he'd done enough and join them, or slink off to one of the abandoned bars to get drunk and wait for the end. But he'd made a promise to himself that he'd never do that again. He'd made a promise to Garrus that he'd do something good, a promise to Cassius that he'd stay alive... there just wasn't really a way to keep both of them.

... But maybe someone _was_ looking out for him, just this once.

He'd stepped off the platform to help someone when the next evac ship landed with a screeching skid, throwing up sparks across the platform before it finally smacked to a stop against the partition where Lantar had been standing earlier. Clambering inside told him what'd happened- the old volus pilot had overloaded himself with one too many stims on all the trips back and forth and his heart had given out.

"Shit." The empty injectors clinked against the hull as he kicked them aside to pull the dead man from his seat so he could lean in and start running systems checks. "Hey, we got any pilots ready?" he shouted out the door, not looking up from the screens and charts spread out around him. _Yeah that was good, that was good, that could be a liiiittle better but it'd function..._

"Don't bother, that thing's trash. Just get some krogan to drag it out of the way."

"This bird can still fly and we need every vessel we can get, just find a pilot."

The cop in the doorway stared at him over her visor, then at the scraped up hunk of metal he was sitting in. "You're serious."

"Lady I've flown shuttles that were on fire with half of their doors blown off backwards through Omega traffic before, I know what is and isn't salvageable. She'll be good to go in four minutes."

After a few seconds more of that lingering uncertain look the cop gestured to the officer holding back the crowd. "Alright, you feel that strongly about it you pilot the thing. You can fly, right?"

By the time it processed that he'd just been Oked to bail out on the Station there were already two dozen terrified people swarming into the back of the car, leaving him staring back slack mandibled. "... Yeah. I did most of the flying for Archangel. The early days, at least."

If she caught the significance of what he'd said it didn't show on her face. As weird a time to get philosophical as it was it struck him hard then just how small and insignificant everything they'd done was. How little Archangel had meant in the end. How little-

The bulk of the old Palaveni army bag pushing into his back when he went to sit pulled him out of it. That he took off and stowed next to him while the rest of his cargo sat or stood nervously in the back, crying and holding each other or staring at nothing with the kind of distant stare he'd had a minute ago. No one he knew. Soft words were of little help but when the systems were finally ready he saluted his fellow officer out the window anyway. "Goddess be with you."

"And may the Spirits guide your path."

Lantar's little ship took off into the darkness of space. Less than an hour later they watched via vidlink from their refugee center on Sur'Kesh as the reapers took the Citadel.

* * *

They waited out the end of the war on Sur'Kesh. He couldn't have told you if it took hours or days or years... it was all just one long anxious moment. But he could have told you how it ended. The first time he saw a Reaper in person was the last after all.

The black metal monsters were just touching down in Talat when they began exploding in a garish flash of light. All across the sky its fellows that had been descending on them did the same, curling in on themselves like roaches and shattering. Smoke, debris, and fire fell like rain sewing chaos and confusion, but when the smoke cleared no Reapers remained. It was terrible, it was beautiful, it was the first day of the rest of their lives. No one knew how or why with communications networks still down all across the galaxy, but they were really dead. ...Deep in his gut Lantar knew it was Shepard. Somehow she'd really done it.

And the celebrations that night... _Spirits._ He wouldn't forget them for a long time.

In the chaos of those beautiful hours a lot happened. Maybe as much as had happened on the lays days of the Citadel, but it was better. There was laughter with the crying, toasts with the screaming, revelry in the movements of a dozen different species' bodies. A lot of people were dead but they were still alive, and in the coming time they'd bury the dead and move on with the loved ones they had left. Some of those he hadn't anticipated seeing again- like Linaria who he found that night crouched in the Ridgefields tent, holding her family and weeping openly. Something about not wanting the girls to hate Mark for leaving her behind like her mom had left her dad to die on Rannoch. Part of her would probably never forgive herself for leaving her post but if the looks on Mark and her daughters' faces said anything it was that it was worth it.

The second miracle was that he made it through the whole damn thing sober. Booze of both chiralites flowed like water in the parties exploding across the planet but Lantar didn't touch a drop of it. Granted he wouldn't be sitting down easily for the next days for all the pounding he'd put his ass through... but it was the best kind of pain.

Sidonis didn't stay on Sur'Kesh long after ships started flying civilian passengers again. The galaxy was a mess and as a good turian he had to go home. Not the Citadel- fuck knew what had happened to it or if the ward he'd lived in even still existed. Not Invictus- never Invictus, never again. He hated that place to his core and even if his parents were still alive somehow a little thing like a subverted apocalypse wouldn't change their minds about disowning him for going AWOL when he was 16. It was the other home, the ancestral home he'd always dreamed of: Palaven. With the primary relays down the trip through the secondary ones meant a lot more crossing open space and a lot more time, but there was no lack of work to do once they got there.

It was strange being on Palaven after dreaming about it so long from a tiny outpost on the edge on the Invicitan jungle, but he'd gotten used to it in the last six months. Reconstruction had been coming along at a breakneck pace- take a few million stressed out turians and give them a job and they'll throw themselves at it like they were drowning. Which they had been to be honest- months of relentless war had wiped out at least a third of the population. The casualty numbers were still rising, they'd just stopped reporting it after a while because there was only so long you needed to beat a dead gennaire. There wasn't a turian alive who hadn't lost someone, they'd gotten the point after the second billion. Reconstruction, rebuilding, planning millennia old cities all over again... it was work and it gave them a purpose that kept them all together. The new spires of Cipritine in the distance spoke to the indomitable nature of the turian spirit

Lantar flew construction vehicles, worked security, delivered relief aid to people living in the camps, whatever was needed. More than a few nights found him unable to sleep, sitting at a window and staring across the darkened skies of Palaven thinking about... things he didn't have time to think about. Years passed. He roomed with a couple of different people as construction areas shifted. Slept with some of them, nothing serious. When word got to their corner of space that Commander Shepard had survived Lantar cheered along with the rest of his apartment block and told the story about meeting her half a dozen times to celebrating drunks who probably didn't believe a word of what he was saying and didn't care. The same joy went for the quarians and the geth reigniting the first Primary Relay, the restoration of Nimines' shipyards, the birth of the Primarch's daughter, the first Pro Clawball game on Palaveni soil... any reason to celebrate was a good one when the job at their hands would take decades if not generations.

Like the first time he saw Garrus again. The Normandy had been MIA for a year but back then journalists still had to carry the news personally across the intervening space. It was three months after the fact by the time he got to watch Garrus and Shepard buck the ceremony taking place around them to run to each other and embrace in the middle of the runway. They touched foreheads and kissed and the bar around him erupted in riotous applause. A few people who'd wanted the stunning Commander or the handsome Legate to themselves wept into their beers, Lantar just raised his tupari and smiled so hard his mandibles hurt.

Five years after the war's end found him in the same bar again, watching the couple on the holoscreen with a smaller smile. This time they were on the Presidium, dressed formally and dancing gracelessly. Work had started to repair the Citadel in the last few months, but with the state of the galaxy it was mostly due to the single-mindedness of the Keepers that there were the facilities to have a wedding on the station. Over their shoulders from time to time the devastation that lay beyond was visible though the night-cycle shadows. But the newlyweds didn't care, gazing at each other and laughing when they stepped on each other's feet. And watching it, he's... he's happy. Unquestioningly happy. After everything they've done, everything they've sacrificed, everything they've been through? They deserve it.

Without turning from the screen Lantar gestured to the bartender and a bottle of tupari found its way into his hands. The old grey turian chuckled with a small flare of his mandibles as he passed it over. Lantar just rolled his eyes- he'd known the guy since back when he'd owned the Dark Star, so he took the subvocal teasing about ordering sports drinks at a bar all the damn time in stride.

There's a familiar sweet smell somewhere across the room but he doesn't turn his head, he knows by now the smoker's an elderly quarian marine reveling in her new suitlessness with the most expensive cigs she cold afford. Something the geth did, he didn't even pretend to understand how it worked. He just breathed it in deeply, sat with his elbows on the bar and watched the lovers onscreen dance by.

Behind him a voice spoke up: deep, rough, rumbling, and beautiful. "Mind if I take a seat?"

It was an odd question to ask seeing as no one else was sitting on this side of the bar. Something in Lantar's chest tightened and he turned around, raising his eyes.

"Cassius."

The older man didn't say anything, just took the seat next to him same as he had seven years ago in a shitty little bar on the ass end of Omega. But he was different than he'd always looked in Lantar's memories- older, new scars running down his fringe, hands fidgeting nervously on the bar top in a way he'd never seen him do before. It was too different, Spirits it couldn't be his imagination. Then those gorgeous blue eyes focused on him and his heart skipped a beat. Lantar didn't know what to say. Cass didn't seem to either, so they sat there in silence for a few minutes. Not once did he stop being real.

"So that's your guy, huh." was what he finally broke the silence with. For a few seconds Sidonis didn't know what he was talking about until he followed Cass' eyes to the holoscreen where the newlyweds swayed together in quiet bliss.

"Yeah. But he's always been her guy." He looked up at them for a few moments longer before turning it off with a few gestures on his omnitool and turned fully to face the man at his side. "Cass-"

"I shouldn't have turned you in." came out heavily, subvocals thick with regret and mandibles hiked up hard against his face. "I should have-"

Lantar shook his head sharply and grabbed Cass' broad cowl, pulling the taller man down enough so he could press his face into his throat. The gesture was an intimate one used to pin a partner's scent in your memory, and while there were bolder moves he could have made this one was enough to silence the uneasy apology. A few more breaths and a hard swallow later he finally got his own words out, soft against his skin. "Doesn't matter. That's all over, you came back."

From where he was he couldn't see Cass' face but he could feel the tension that'd built in his body dissipate. A strong arms looped around his shoulders to pull him tight against his side. "So have I earned another chance?" The question rumbled against his face through the thin skin of Cass' throat while the gold points on his mandibles tickled his fringe. Sidonis laughed and closed his eyes. Guy still smelled the same.

"Yeah. ...Cassius?"

"Mhmn?"

_I love you_ was in his mouth but he decided against it. Too presumptive, too soon. That would come in time. "I'm glad you're not dead."

"It was a near thing a couple times but I have a few Spirits watching over me. Still be happier if I never see another banshee again all the same."

"Never had to deal with those, I was in C-Sec till the day they took the Citadel."

"Damn. You'll have to tell me about that sometime kid."

He pulled his head back slightly so that he could look up at him, uncurling a hand from his shirt to brush his talons down a long pale tine where the gold banding was broken by sharp scars. "Only if you do the same. I don't remember these."

"Heh, that was the banshee. Tagged me before I could get the last hundred rounds into her head. It's a long story." _There's time for that later_ were the words in his subvocals, and Lantar smiled, curling back up tight into his side. How, why, it could wait. With any luck, they had the rest of their lives for that. Right now he was just happy to have another chance.

End.

* * *

A/N- It's been a long beautiful ride folks, thank you to everyone who's come on it with me. This is the end of the fic proper but I'll be coming back in time with an epilogue (I may have to just link you guys here on FF depending on if I can make an r-rated version) and some deleted scenes, and there'll be other stories following Lantar and Cass. I'll keep you updated here.


End file.
